NG-911 Transition Will Be Costly, Change 911 Centers, NENA Officials Say

"You're probably getting the message by now that everything needs to be replaced,” said TeleCommunication Systems Director of Next-Generation 911 Bob Gojanovich. The high potential costs likely seem scary, he acknowledged. “That’s not lost on NENA.” He said it’s been a part of all talks for over a decade. Costs would likely be lower once the new system is in place, said Roger Hixson, NENA technical issues director. “The trick, of course, is to get over the hump of the transition."

That transition, in the form of technical upgrades, 911 center administrative changes and training, will likely take years, NENA officials said. Governments will need to operate NG-911 “parallel with E-911 for some period of time,” Gojanovich said. The transition to NG-911 needs to be “seamless” given the importance of emergency communications, Hixson said. The ability for 911 centers to acquire next-generation equipment will depend on individual jurisdictions, some of which will require assistance in funding the transition, Hixson said.

Speakers pointed out steps that need to happen now. NENA Government Affairs Director Trey Forgety pointed to state regulations that date to an era of telecom monopolies and “haven’t gone away.” The rules now create “roadblocks” for jurisdictions that have tried to roll out NG-911 technology, he said. NENA is working with NARUC and the National Conference of State Legislatures to help change these obstacles, he said. 911 centers will likely operate differently due to challenges today, Forgety said. It makes “no sense” for one county to operate a 911 center, said Hixson, suggesting people move away from the vision of “thousands” of 911 centers. There are more than 6,000 operating in the U.S., one for every five to 12 counties or so. “Love thy 911 neighbor,” Hixson said. He encouraged counties to “put it together as a consortium” -- “that’s where we're headed.” Gojanovich described “turf issues” and arguments about consolidation of centers now, which sometimes get wrapped up in what he called “political” arguments. NG-911 has opened more discussion of “hosted/cloud-based” possibilities, he said. Today’s 911 centers are “restricted by landlines and geography,” said Ty Wooten, NENA director of education and operational issues. With NG-911, there will be more flexibility and an ability to route calls across regions, speakers agreed.

The timeline, which is “in the years,” calls for shifts, said Gojanovich. He envisioned more sharing of resources among government entities in many jurisdictions. “911 will be one of the applications running on that [shared government] network” with “dedicated bandwidth,” he said. Training alone will require major investment in what will be “a lengthy process,” Wooten said. He described a new type of 911 center that may require “some different skill sets” and that will call for likely two to three to perhaps up to six months for training employees. These call takers will see “one base of information” that’s consistent, said Gojanovich, who pointed to the better mapping inherent in the geographic information system of NG-911. It’s important there’s “a consistent interface presented to the call taker,” he added.

The panel considered how technology will pose challenges and opportunities to NG-911. The “Achilles’ heel” of VoIP is that users provide their physical addresses, which aren’t validated, said Gojanovich. “We are forced to use the location provided by the subscriber,” he said, calling it “the weak point” of VoIP that needs to be automated. Hixson referred to the “specter” of email and that NG-911, as envisioned, won’t handle email 911 messages “very well” due to email’s lack of location information. “Right now it’s just not workable,” Hixson said. “Email’s really not a viable option in the picture.” Future 911 centers will be able to receive not only voice calls but texts and data in a way where it’s “hierarchically obtained,” said Hixson. He described the NG system’s ability to pull information from telematics systems, which may have sensors installed in cars and certain infrastructure. The new system will be able to handle advanced options like machine-to-machine communication: “It is adaptable for future things we don’t even know about,” Wooten said. “The possibilities are limitless."

Recent decades have stretched the traditional technology, panelists said. The 911 system was manipulated to add “extra things,” -- to allow for wireless calls, which took about three years of technological maneuvering, and then for VoIP, which took about a year, but the country shouldn’t stay “behind the curve,” Hixson said. “The underlying technology for E-911 is just not what we need going forward,” Gojanovich said. Many counties are still struggling to implement E-911, Hixson added, but said a bigger push is necessary for NG-911 now: “This is, ultimately, a nationwide system.”