NG9-1-1, Dispatch, and FirstNet. Let’s Start with a Happy Birthday to 9-1-1
9-1-1 celebrated its 50-year anniversary last week. Countless lives have been saved by the expediency of the 9-1-1 system and those answering the phones who take charge when needed, sometimes calming a hysterical mother or father and then walking him or her through first steps to administer aid until paramedics arrive. Every month we hear stories about how a 9-1-1 operator saved a life by instructing the caller how to do CPR compressions on the chest, to keep air flowing, or some other way to administer first aid until help arrives. While 9-1-1 services have made a huge difference in public safety responses to emergencies, many 9-1-1 centers have not been upgraded for a number of years.
From Citizen to Responder. A few weeks ago, I wrote a column entitled, “Rural Broadband, the Headless Horseman” to make the point that not only FirstNet but a multitude of federal, state, and other agencies have their sights set on providing broadband to rural America but since there is no leadership at the top to organize all of the disparate efforts, it will take a lot longer to solve the digital divide issue than it should. This brings me to another series of services that are interrelated but seem to be moving forward without much in the way of structured management to make sure all the pieces fit together in what citizens will see as seamless experiences in receiving public safety assistance.
It starts with what happens when a citizen calls 9-1-1 and connects to a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) that takes and verifies as much information as possible and then passes it over to the dispatch center, which then notifies the first responder community of the type, nature, and location of the call based on the information obtained. It should be noted that sometimes the PSAP and dispatch center are one and the same, sometimes they are co-located, and sometimes they are apart from each other.
The last piece of information, location, is often the most difficult to determine because many calls come from a highway and the citizen has no clue as to exactly where he/she is. Unfortunately, our FCC’s old and now new rules for 9-1-1 location-based services won’t help the location issue much, but that is a longer and different story. Once the call is verified, it is sent to the dispatcher at the dispatch center or in some smaller PSAPs, the person answering the call becomes the dispatcher for the call. From there it is sent out to appropriate field units such as a single police car, multiple fire apparatus, a paramedic unit, or any combination of these. Read the Entire Post Here Continue reading