Challenges beyond technology

While the technological landscape for NG-911 is encouraging, there are other issues that must be addressed before such systems can be deployed on a widespread basis. In some states, decades-old laws — written when analog telephony was the only 911 option — remain on the books. While these laws effectively prohibit migration to NG-911, new legislation designed to address these issues is being introduced regularly. Similarly, some regulatory language needs to be updated, as well.

Establishing a proper governance model can play a critical role in the success of the 911 evolution. In Vermont, for instance, policy decisions made nearly two decades ago "turned out to be rather brilliant," Tucker said, because multiple jurisdictions were coalesced into a single statewide entity.

"We're in a position where, when we decided to change systems … we were able to make those decisions on behalf of the [entire] state, and we have one integrated system that is served through eight distinct PSAPs," Tucker said.

Perhaps the greatest functional challenges are those associated with the operational aspects of NG-911, from the perspective of both the PSAPs and the telecommunications providers. For years, 911 call-takers have expressed concern that dealing with multiple forms of media — voice, text, photos and video — could spawn unwanted information overload that in turn could result in key data being missed.

However, despite the fact that they only are in the early stages of their text-to-911 trial, Vermont's PSAPs have not encountered any significant issues associated with adding text to its native capabilities, according to Tucker.

"It wasn't really difficult at all," he said, noting the similarities that exist between text and TTY. "We had to do some training, but it's really gone very smoothly."

There are greater concerns associated with the addition of elements such as images, mapping and video, but even those applications shouldn't be too difficult to manage operationally, according to Walt Magnussen, director for telecommunications atTexas A&M University's Internet2 Technology Evaluation Center, who participated in several NG-911 tests from 2007 to 2009.

"Realistically, with about five graduate students in less than a year, we pretty much built all that stuff," Magnussen said. "It's not hardened or production stuff that you would put into the network, but if we can do a complete architecture from end to end with five graduate students in that much time, if industry put all of its resources into it, they're not going to have problems with this."

Another potential limiting factor is the availability of IP connectivity, which is at the heart of NG-911. For that reason, Magnussen has been talking with public-safety entities about the possibility of using a fiber backbone for dual public-safety purposes — as backhaul for the 700 MHz broadband LTE network and to provide IP connectivity between PSAPs to support NG-911.

Meanwhile, Meer said that he believes the industry needs to better address the roles and responsibilities that the various players — most notably, the PSAPs and telecommunications providers — need to fill as part of the next-generation architecture. In the legacy 911 system, carriers basically are responsible for getting calls to the selective router, while public safety is responsible for handling calls after they leave the selective router.

However, a new paradigm will be needed in the future because NG-911 does not utilize a selective router. As a result, questions need to be answered regarding who is responsible for maintaining address databases, Meer said.

Historically, public safety has paid for address verification and routing information, based on their funding of the ALI database. But in the i3 model, the location information server — which is an element of the Emergency Services IP Network, or ESInet, that delivers voice, video or text calls to the PSAP — becomes the responsibility of each telco, both in terms of funding and operations.

"That represents a [big] change in the scope of work for the service provider," Meer said.