TNS’ Voice Transit + solution was announced at the CCA 2025 Mobile Carriers show in April 2025. Voice Transit+ is built on TNS’ foundational Voice Transit solution by offering service providers a platform to reduce costs, consolidate vendors and minimize their operational footprint while addressing critical issues such as the FCC 988 georouting mandate.
What is the 988 Mandate?
988 is the three-digit dialing code that routes US callers to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Launched in July 2022, the 988 Lifeline connects people that are in need of mental health assistance to trained crisis counselors, made up of over 200 local crisis centers.
In September 2024, the process to start routing calls from mobile devices to 988 crisis centers based on the caller’s approximate location, versus by area code – known as “georouting” – began with two major US wireless carriers.
What is Georouting?
Georouting – or geographical routing – is a method of routing a phone call based on the location of the caller. In terms of the 988 georouting mandate, this means that wireless carriers will be able to route a call to the 988 Lifeline to the nearest crisis center without an operator having to manually find out the location of the caller.
How this process works is by:
- Someone dials 988 from their cellular device
- The carrier generates cell site location data for the call (Carrier in P-ANI Header)
- The call is sent to TNS
- Based on the P-ANI of the cellular device, the call is routed to the geographically correct crisis center
The need for georouting 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline calls came from both the 988 Geolocation Report and Geolocation Forum highlighting the need to improve the routing of wireless calls to 988, due to the fact that approximately 80% of calls to the 988 Lifeline come from cellular devices. The issue that this posed to the 988 Lifeline is that the area codes of those wireless phones do not always reflect their physical location.
How Does Voice Transit + Support Carriers to Adhere to the 988 Mandate?
Carriers now need to be compliant with the 988 georouting mandate within two years, for many wireless carriers they are actively deploying solutions which can help support them. Connectivity to TNS Voice Transit + enables activation for carriers’ use of 988 georouting solution.
The issue that many carriers are now faced with is that they do not have the solutions in place to translate the cell site location data into geographic boundary data. This is where TNS Voice Transit + can help.
988 georouting mandate compliance is just one of the solutions that TNS Voice Transit+ can assist support service providers with.
To find out more, check out the Voice Transit+ Product Sheet.
Brad Zerr is Director of Product Management for TNS Communications Market, with specific responsibility for its network, routing and mobility services.
