WASHINGTON—The Department of Transportation is embarking on a two-year, $11-million pilot project to develop a next-generation 911 system as the agency explores various technology advances.
Jenny Hansen, project coordinator and a DoT consultant on the Next Generation 911 Initiative, told the Congressional Enhanced 911 Caucus Tuesday afternoon that the nation is “starting with an Internet-Protocol-based platform,” noting that most of the country doesn’t even have IP-based 911 today.
The NG-911 Initiative has a snappy slogan: “It’s not just telephones anymore,” reflecting that the American consumer increasingly communicates on a variety of devices and very few of them are wired telephones.
“The nation’s 911 system, based on decades-old technology cannot handle the text, data, images and video that are increasingly common in personal communications and critical to future transportation safety and mobility advances,” according to a handout Hansen provided to the caucus. “The Transportation Department understands that access to emergency services provided by 911 in today’s world of evolving technologies will ultimately occur with a broader array of interconnected networks comprehensively supporting emergency services, from public access to those services, to the delivery and facilitation of the services themselves.”
The objective received positive reviews from a response panel at the caucus event. “I think the public expects that whatever device they are on, they can call 911,” said Susan McGurkin, director of government and regulatory policy for Intrado Inc.
Hansen hopes to have a request for proposal ready for release before the end of the quarter. Plans call for a comment cycle and listening sessions to follow. The final objective “is to design a system that enables the transmission of voice, text, images and other data from all types of communication devices to PSAPs, and onto interconnected emergency-responder networks,” according to the handout.
While the final product or report could be done in a lab to show that it could work, Hansen hopes to do a demonstration. “We would like to put this in the ground somewhere,” she said.
DoT appears to understand the enormity of the project.
“The original 911 network is based on outmoded analog technology and landline transmission. Public-safety answering points, like many local and state-funded services, lack resources to upgrade their equipment and training to utilize existing technology,” according to information provided by Hansen.
Funding appears to be a major problem. “Funding can be the ‘F’ word, said Paul Obsitnik, vice president of TCS. Patrick Halley, director of government affair for the National Emergency Number Association, praised the efforts of the public-safety and telecommunications industries to include funding in the recently passed budget bill. However, that funding is only available following the auction of the analog spectrum TV broadcasters are relinquishing as part of the digital TV transition. Halley said funding is necessary today, not in 2008.
“Thus far we haven’t appropriated anything,” said Halley, noting that local funding financed through surcharges on telephone bills—many of them landline—are “decreasing daily. People are talking about phone service being a free service and a surcharge of 10 percent on zero is still zero.”
