Customer Story
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CAUCA Trusts SignalWire APIs to Run 9-1-1 Call Center
Why Québec's emergency call center moved from a self-built FreeSWITCH platform to SignalWire as call volume grew.
Abbi Minessale
Senior Product Marketing Manager
Overview
CAUCA runs its 9-1-1 emergency call center and its 3-1-1 non-emergency line on SignalWire Voice. The same platform powers a municipal alert system that delivers a prerecorded voice message from the mayor to every citizen in a city, with emergency or municipal information.
Originally, CAUCA ran everything on a platform they built themselves using FreeSWITCH, the open-source telephony engine that powers much of the communications industry. As call volume grew and they needed to scale, they moved to SignalWire — built by the same team behind FreeSWITCH — knowing it was infrastructure they could trust.
About CAUCA
CAUCA is a multi-service center specializing in emergency and municipal communications, headquartered in Saint-Georges, Québec. Its dispatchers handle 9-1-1 emergency calls and provide access to fire departments, health and municipal emergency centers, and informational alerts. More than 500 cities in Québec rely on the organization, representing 1.8 million citizens. SignalWire handles CAUCA's call traffic and powers its citizen alert system.
"SignalWire is really easy. The first day I used the API I was surprised like — woah — I'm done already? It's so easy to use."
Francis Tanguay
IT Director at CAUCA
The Challenge
CAUCA handles 9-1-1 dispatch calls, where reliability is non-negotiable. The team needed a platform that could receive emergency calls and conference dispatchers in real time.
Alerting was the second requirement: delivering emergency messages to every citizen in a city, up to 6,000 calls per day, without that outbound traffic touching the phone lines carrying emergency calls.
Everything ran on a platform the team had built themselves on FreeSWITCH, but growth pushed the system past what they wanted to maintain in-house. What they needed was one flexible platform that could carry 9-1-1 dispatch traffic and high-volume alert traffic, fully separated.
The Solution
CAUCA knew FreeSWITCH, so they knew the team behind SignalWire. That heritage made SignalWire a platform they could trust with emergency traffic. Every question about communications requirements in Canada was answered thoroughly, with technical depth the team describes as above and beyond.
Getting connected took the development team almost no time at all. Because the Dashboard is organized by project, the emergency call center, alert system, and other applications run side by side with clean separation.
On the voice side, SignalWire Voice carries both the 9-1-1 emergency call center and the 3-1-1 non-emergency line. The same APIs power the alert system, delivering a prerecorded message from the mayor to every citizen in a city, up to 6,000 calls per day. More than 100 Canadian cities use the service today, and that number is growing.
For website security, CAUCA adds SignalWire Messaging to handle two-factor authentication and code validation.
The Results
High call volume | Quick deployment | Technical knowledge | Trusted technology |
|---|---|---|---|
Up to 6,000 outbound calls per day give Canadian citizens real-time emergency and municipal information. | Every question about Canadian communications requirements was answered with depth CAUCA describes as above and beyond. | Every question about Canadian communications requirements was answered with depth CAUCA describes as above and beyond. | As longtime FreeSWITCH users, CAUCA trusts the team that built FreeSWITCH — the open-source engine much of the telecom industry runs on — to carry its emergency communication traffic. |
Can SignalWire handle emergency call traffic like 9-1-1?
Yes. CAUCA runs its 9-1-1 emergency call center in Québec on SignalWire Voice, including real-time dispatcher conferencing. SignalWire is built by the team behind FreeSWITCH, the open-source telecom engine with two decades of production use in carrier and emergency environments.
How does CAUCA separate emergency calls from outbound alert calls?
CAUCA runs each application as its own project on SignalWire: emergency dispatch, the 3-1-1 line, and the citizen alert system. Each project has its own phone numbers, configuration, and credentials, so the systems run independently and CAUCA can manage and monitor each one on its own. A single city's alert campaign can send up to 6,000 calls a day alongside the continuous inbound 3-1-1 and 9-1-1 traffic.
What does migrating from a self-hosted FreeSWITCH platform to SignalWire look like?
For CAUCA, it meant moving call handling from infrastructure they built and maintained to APIs run by SignalWire. Their developers connected quickly; CAUCA's IT Director recalls finishing his first build the same day he started with the API.
Does SignalWire support Canadian telecom requirements?
Yes. SignalWire provides phone numbers and voice service in Canada, and CAUCA reports that every question about Canadian communications requirements was answered thoroughly by SignalWire's team.
What call volume can a system like CAUCA's handle?
Up to 6,000 prerecorded voice calls per day go out for a single city's alert campaign, alongside continuous inbound 9-1-1 and 3-1-1 traffic. Across its customer base, SignalWire carries billions of minutes and messages annually.
Which SignalWire products does CAUCA use?
SignalWire Voice runs CAUCA's 9-1-1 call center, 3-1-1 non-emergency line, and municipal voice alert system. SignalWire Messaging handles SMS two-factor authentication and code validation on its website.
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