Utah
‘Next Generation’ 911 system goes online in Utah
911 operators reply calls on the Valley Emergency Communications Heart on Oct. 26, 2012, in West Valley Metropolis. Utah Communications Authority introduced the completion of the Utah Subsequent Era 911 system improve on Tuesday. (Tom Good, Deseret Information)
Estimated learn time: 1-2 minutes
SALT LAKE CITY — When an individual calls 911, it’s assumed that assist shall be despatched.
However what if there’s an outage, or what if a sufferer is able that texting 911 is the one possibility?
“It is a kind of issues most residents by no means take into consideration, however while you do, it is good to have a state-of-the-art system,” stated Quin Stephens, government director and normal counsel of the Utah Communications Authority.
On Tuesday, Stephens introduced the completion of the Utah Subsequent Era 911 system improve. The announcement marks the completion of a three-year mission geared toward changing Utah’s 911 call-taking gear — together with servers and software program dealing with 911 calls — and upgrading the entire cellphone circuits that carry 911 visitors.
Stephens stated the brand new gear has truly been in use for a number of months however Utah Communications Authority waited till Tuesday, after having the prospect to work out any potential bugs, to make the announcement.
The brand new system is internet-based and can enable emergency dispatchers to obtain data that the previous 911 system could not present, akin to extra exact places of callers, textual content messages, movies and photos. The brand new system additionally supplies a number of backups, so if one space has a 911 outage, it may be picked up by different areas.
“Utah now has a system that’s prepared, each time phone service suppliers are prepared, to just accept extra superior information streams,” stated Melanie Crittenden, the 911 division director for the Utah Communications Authority.
The power to ship photos and movies to 911 all through Utah shall be coming sooner or later, Stephens stated.
“The completion of this mission is a considerable leap ahead in relation to public security communications and is a major milestone for Utah,” he stated.