911 began when 'every household had a landline;' times have changed, but many emergency call centers haven't

911 service began in some places in 1968.
(Photo by Marissa Lewis, Unsplash)

Think everyone has switched to cellular? Think again. "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," reports Isabelle Bousquette of The Wall Street Journal. "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 U.S. has roughly 5,700 primary and secondary public-safety answering points that respond to 911 calls, and most are "locally funded and operated, and have each taken their own path toward modernization. Overall progress has been slow," Bousquette writes. Patrick Lustig, an Oregon Department of Emergency Management member, told her: "We're using 35-year-old technology today to deliver 911 calls. Everything else has changed except the 911 system."

In 2004, the National Emergency Number Association, a nonprofit group, "came up with the vision for a 'Next Generation 911' center, which could fully take advantage of modern capabilities," Bousquette reports. NENA's goal is to move away from the old systems that "only supports voice communication to an internet-based network, capable of receiving various types of digital data, including more accurate caller location information. . . .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. . . . Meanwhile, theyare left to contend with the limitations of their decades-old systems."

The two systems do not work well together because landlines are tied to unique geographic addresses, and cell-phone locations link to towers, resulting in emergency callers waiting to be transferred. "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. . . . according to Lynne Houserman, a vice president at Motorola Solutions, a provider of services to 911 centers," Bousquette explains. "The call is then routed to a 911 center based on a decades-old database linking cell sites with call center locations. . . . 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."

Inaccurate call routing isn't the only limitation. "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," Bousquette reports. "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."

Because 911 is not a national service, funding remains the main obstacle to change. Aleisha Rucker-Wright, deputy executive director of the Georgia Emergency Communications Authority, "said the state’s ECA has been working to educate policymakers 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.'"