UPDATE The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) issued a statement last week concerning the rash of outages to emergency services throughout the country, saying it usually refrains from commenting until causes are fully understood. However, due to the widespread nature of the breaks in vital services, the association provided the following statement:
“The FCC has rules that apply to companies responsible for delivering 911 calls that require a certain degree of redundancy so that, for example, a company does not rely on a single fiber line or key piece of equipment, and to require these providers to promptly notify 911 centers when outages occur.”
“These rules, however, aren’t enough,” APCO stated. “The FCC receives reports of tens of thousands of 911 outages each year, and it’s likely that a large, unknown number of additional outages occur that don’t have to be reported. APCO is working with the FCC to reevaluate its rules to ensure that 911 centers have critical outage information so they can advise the public on how to contact emergency services.”
APCO continues to explain: “We also know that a substantial investment is needed to make the nation’s 911 systems more reliable and more modern. Today’s 911 systems are in many ways based on 50+-year-old technology, which places severe strains on these systems and limits the options that 911 centers have to address outages and to use modern communications such as multimedia. This is why it is so important that Congress act on major federal funding legislation widely supported by many of the nation’s top public safety associations that would modernize 911 emergency communications networks throughout the country to Next Generation 911.
NG911 would enable the public to communicate with 911 centers using modern IP-based methods including photos, videos, medical data, etc. NG911 also would result in much greater redundancy and resiliency to provide multiple paths for 911 calls to take around a point of failure, better resist system outages, and recover more quickly.
911 professionals are the unsung heroes of our 911 emergency response system. They are the first, first responders, providing lifesaving instructions and directing the appropriate response. This includes during incidents like this outage. Regardless of the cause, scope, or lack of critical information, 911 professionals take immediate steps to help mitigate the impact to the communities they serve.”
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