I_HeERO Newsletter December 2016

MEMBER STATES UPDATE
eCall Implementation in Germany
by Michael Schaefer
Niedersächsisches Ministerium for Wirtschaft, Arbeit and Verkehr
The eCall implementation process in Germany started with several discussions within special national expert
groups. It was necessary to decide how Germany will implement the EU regulation. The main decision at the
end of the discussions was to keep the established 112 mapping in Germany. This means that all German 112
PSAPs (more than 250) needs to be eCall ready in October 2017. The main issue is that there is a big variety of
technical infrastructure from “outdated” to “brand new”. This is due to the different regional responsibilities and
regulations within the 16 Federal States in Germany. Just three Federal States have a centrally organised and
harmonised infrastructure.
To handle this huge number of different contact points it was necessary to do a national eCall roadshow in
parallel to the required state of the art analysis based on a questionnaire. The eCall roadshow took place in most
Federal States in 2016 and aimed to support the local PSAPs regarding the eCall implementation. This includes
technical information and recommendations, the presentation of possible conformity assessments approaches,
the organisation of funding processes as well
as answering open questions. This increased
the feedback of the single PSAPs and enabled
a better communication for the ongoing eCall
implementation activities. Furthermore, it leads
to a better understanding of the individual
challenges of German PSAPs. For example, the call
back of foreign telephone numbers is currently
restricted in most PSAPs. But there are more
critical challenges like real investments being
higher than estimated or technical upgrades
which replace the current infrastructure that were
planned for 2018 and later. All of these challenges
Figure 14: Typical German PSAP Installation with eCall Decoder
need to be solved within the support of the German
PSAPs.
Currently more than 75 % of the German PSAPs provided their feedback to the questionnaired. The analysis of
this feedback showed that more than 50 different PBX’s with several releases and more than 20 different PSAP
software solutions are in operation. This information was the basis for preparing individual blueprints. In detail,
the blueprint focuses on the relevant components including PBX, eCall-Modem and PSAP software and contains
a lot of general information about eCall implementation. The PBX is already installed and internally configured
for ISDN or VoIP. For the eCall recognition and forwarding to the eCall modem, it is necessary to reconfigure or
update the dial plan of the PBX. The eCall modem itself is a new component and currently available either as an
integrated part of the PBX or as an add-on from third-party suppliers. At least, the installed PSAP software must
be updated to display and manage eCall data. Currently more than 50% of the German PSAPs received their
blueprint with individual technical recommendations for the eCall implementation.
To summarise, the eCall implementation in Germany is complex compared to other Member States because of
the huge number of heterogeneous PSAPs. But Germany should be able to finish this process in 2017 thanks to
the assistance they received from the I_HeERO project. The next important steps are to finish the state of the art
analysis and blueprint preparation for each PSAP and to define the process of conformity assessment.
I_HeERO Newsletter - December 2016
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