Kansas PSAPs working with AT&T to build ESInet, take steps toward NG911 during next year

Kansas PSAPs that are part of the statewide solution get the benefit of shared resources associated with issues like cybersecurity and geographic-divergent redundancy, as one host system is located in the northern Kansas and another is located in the southern part of the state, Heitschmidt said. PSAPs are able to pay for their participation in the statewide solution—slated to be fully compliant with next-generation 911 standards—with their normal 911 operating funds, with the cost to participate applied to the number of positions in the PSAP, he said.

“The PSAPs that are on it, love it,” Heitschmidt said. “They’re happy with the fact that they don’t have worry about maintaining it, and they don’t have to worry about updating it. The equipment’s refreshed in the contract on a four-year or five-year basis. The amount of equipment that is on their premises is less than it has been. They don’t have to worry about network connections. It’s all handled by the 911 Coordinating Council’s partner, AT&T.

“So far—without exception—everybody is very pleased with what’s going on and happy that they got on … Everybody is very happy about it, very positive about it, and believes that they made the right decision, as opposed to trying to go out on their own, build their own network, build their ESInet, and then try to figure out how to get that one hooked to a different one. So far, we’ve received good reviews about everything that we’ve done and what we’ve tried to do here.”

With AT&T winning the nationwide contract to build and maintain FirstNet, Kansas officials are even more excited about the selection of AT&T as the statewide 911 vendor, Heitschmidt said.

“We think that we’re in a wonderful position with the fact that our statewide solution is built by AT&T, we’re now having our ESInet built out by AT&T, and FirstNet’s going to be built out by AT&T,” he said. “I’m not sure that you could be in a better position.”