Some 911 Call Centers Still Haven’t Adapted to the Cellphone

Decades after the debut of the cellphone, some 911 centers are still struggling to modernize their communications infrastructure—the result of funding scarcity and hesitation over the high stakes of making changes. 

But the continued use of legacy systems, installed when pay phones dotted city corners and every household had a landline, has led to a host of challenges for call center operators, including misrouted calls, potentially increasing response times. 

U.S. regulators have estimated that as many as 10,000 lives could be saved every year by reducing 911 response times by just one minute. 

The country’s more than 5,500 call centers, typically locally funded and operated, have each taken their own path toward modernization. Overall progress has been slow.

“We’re using 35-year-old technology today to deliver 911 calls,” said Patrick Lustig, Program Operations Team Lead of the Oregon Department of Emergency Management. “Everything else has changed except the 911 system.”  

The National Emergency Number Association, a nonprofit group, in 2004 came up with the vision for a “Next Generation 911” center, which could fully take advantage of modern capabilities. At the core of Next Generation 911 is a shift from copper telephone infrastructure that only supports voice communication to an internet-based network, capable of receiving various types of digital data, including more accurate caller location information as well as photos and videos—once the appropriate software is layered on top. NENA has published a series of standards for Next Generation 911 in the years since.

By the end of 2022, deployments of Next Generation 911 technology covered about 56.2% of the U.S. population, according to consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. 

For the remaining 43.8% of the population, it could be several more years until upgrades take shape. And meanwhile, they are left to contend with the limitations of their decades-old systems.  

Call Routing and Location

Imprecise call routing is one of the biggest problems for call centers operating on older communications infrastructure, said Becky Bacon, executive director of Christian County Emergency Services 911 in Missouri. 

NENA estimates 27 million calls on legacy systems are misrouted annually, wasting precious time as the operator then has to transfer the caller to the appropriate center. 

Unlike landline phones, which are registered to particular addresses, a cellphone’s location has generally been determined by which cell tower handles the call, according to Lynne Houserman, a vice president at Motorola Solutions, a provider of networking, software and services to 911 centers nationwide. The call is then routed to a 911 center based on a decades-old database linking cell sites with call center locations, she said.

But cell site boundaries are imprecise and sometimes fall within multiple 911 centers jurisdictions—meaning calls aren’t always routed to the nearest one, she said. “You could be right next door to Seattle P.D., but because of where your call happened to plot, it puts you in King County 911,” said Houserman.

But the software in cellphones can transmit more precise locations, the way it does for Uber or Google Maps. Over the last decade, Apple

“That device knows where it’s at. It’s just that the 911 centers are not capable of receiving that information today,” said Oregon’s Lustig.  

Once Next Generation upgrades enable device-based routing, the 911 operator would also automatically receive that device-specific location when they pick up the call, said Frank Kuchta, Oregon’s State 911 program manager. Today legacy setups can access it through an additional service provider such as RapidSOS—if the device owner has opted in—but again, this doesn’t help with routing, he said. 

Texting and Multimedia

During a shooting rampage at Virginia Tech in 2007, texts from students and witnesses poured into 911 lines. All went unanswered because 911 centers weren’t equipped to receive texts.  

Sixteen years later, about 40% to 45% of the country’s 911 centers still can’t accept texts, according to NENA, which described texting as critical in sensitive situations, including domestic violence incidents, as well as for the hearing-impaired. 

With a Next Generation 911 network, texting is automatically enabled, Houserman said, although there are also some interim ways to make it work without the full network. 

A Next Generation 911 network also enables the 911 center to accept photos, videos or streaming videos from a cellphone and share these with first responders.

911 centers say these new capabilities are critical for enabling them to catch up to the way people are used to communicating in all other parts of their lives. 

“Thinking that I can text a picture to my mom of something, that’s great and grand that’s going on, but I can’t send a picture of someone who’s an active shooter to 911 is kind of a crazy concept,” said Aleisha Rucker-Wright, deputy executive director of the Georgia Emergency Communications Authority. 

Moving Forward

Funding has continued to be the primary barrier to investing in the necessary 911 system upgrades, NENA said. 

Most states have a 911 tax, which is often just enough, or in some cases not even enough, to maintain current legacy systems rather than invest in major upgrades, Houserman said, although some have successfully sought increases. Oregon was able to increase its 75-cent tax to $1 in 2020 and to $1.25 in 2021. 

“That funding is key. There are a lot of states and jurisdictions that don’t have the funding ability to procure these large, expensive, redundant systems,” said Oregon’s Kuchta.

No federal funding has been doled out to Next Generation 911 efforts since $109 million in 2012, as part of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act. Earlier this year, new funding bills were introduced in both the House and the Senate. 

A 2018 report submitted to Congress estimated it would cost between $9.5 billion and $12.7 billion to deploy Next Generation 911 infrastructure nationwide. 

“Legislators aren’t prioritizing the modernization of our nation’s 911 technology and they need to be,” said Mahesh Saptharishi, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Motorola Solutions. 

In Georgia, Rucker-Wright said the state’s Emergency Communications Authority has been working to educate policy makers and stakeholders on Next Generation 911. She tells them things like: “If you call and you order delivery or you call for an Uber, they know exactly where to come to find you … Our current 911 system unfortunately is not able to find you.” 

But even with the funds, other barriers remain, including training 911 staff on upgraded systems and getting buy-in from local governments, 911 centers say. Finally, there is major hesitation and fear at 911 centers to making any major changes to a system that is so vital to the population.

It’s hard to get enough funding and support to invest in upgrades when things seem to be working fine, said Missouri’s Bacon. “But really and truly a lot of the things with the telcos aren’t working anymore,” she said.

Write to Isabelle Bousquette at [email protected]