Put away the PowerPoints, next-gen 911 capabilities are real

It’s an exciting time for public-safety communications, as the industry takes steps to leverage IP-based technology in an effort to introduce data functionality into its systems while reducing its reliance on legacy systems that use decades-old technology.

Much attention, rightfully, is being paid to FirstNet, but the reality is that it will be at least two or three years before we will see significant deployments in that arena. In contrast, the transition to next-generation 911 is happening in the marketplace today, and I look forward to seeing the latest and greatest in emergency call-taking technology during the annual National Emergency Number Association (NENA) conference next week in Denver.

At this show a year ago, text-to-911 functionality was still largely in the realm of the unknown—after all, the FCC mandate requiring carriers to provide text-to-911 service to those public-safety answering points (PSAPs) ready to receive such communication had only been in effect for a few weeks. Today, about 1,000 PSAPs are able to receive emergency text messages, and industry sources say that number should more than double over the next 12 months.

In other words, the industry has moved a long way in the six years since the first 911 text message was sent to a PSAP in Black Hawk County, Iowa.

And text-to-911 functionality is just the tip of the next-gen iceberg. As depicted in content provided by Intrado for this newsletter, tangible progress is being made in several key areas, including the painstaking process of mapping even large states like New York, and PSAPs are realizing that they can start their migration to next-gen 911 by focusing initially in an area that best suits their particular needs.

Meanwhile, location-based solutions—dealing with issues associated with the general public, as well as those associated with internal first-responder matters—are well past the vaporware stage and are hitting the market.

Of course, there’s still work to be done. Enterprises have embraced the notion of flexible voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephone solutions, but integrating them with 911 systems to ensure that emergency callers get help as quickly as possible remains a challenge. Meanwhile, mobile applications offer tremendous promise and flexibility, but they also pose difficulties in terms of providing accurate location information for a 911 caller.