911 Goes to Washington Attendees Push NG-911 Envelope

Organized by the National Emergency Number Association (NENA), hundreds of 911 professionals converged on Washington, D.C., this week for the 911 Goes to Washington event and heard some of the more optimistic news in terms of deployment of Next-Generation 911 (NG-911) services.

The event is a chance for 911 professionals to convene and tell Congress about the growth of the profession and what’s still needed to enhance it.

It’s been a long road for NG-911, but the industry can now boast that at least one state (California) is close to end-to-end deployment of NG-911 and that the industry is moving closer to a faster and more accurate 911 response.

The industry recently celebrated version three of NENA’s i3 NG-911 standard, which will enhance interoperability between emergency response agencies and first responders on a national level.

Another standard just accredited in the last few weeks will establish easy moving of data over IP networks from a caller to the correct 911 center.

In today’s world, roughly 11 or 12 percent of 911 calls are misrouted to the wrong 911 center. Soon, with NG-911 calling, the capabilities for routing will allow for the transfer of location information instead of the number of the cellphone from a 911 call to be pulled; the data associated with that call will determine correct routing.

“That’s a huge change to be able to have the location of the caller, not the number from which the person is calling,” said Brian Fontes, NENA CEO. “We know that we have our cellphones fixed to an area code and prefix, and we may be traveling elsewhere and oftentimes when we dial 911 [from that location] it may go to the legacy center in or outside of the area where there is legacy service.”

There’s also been improvement in location accuracy of an individual caller from the standpoint of being found by emergency responders. “There have been huge improvements in location accuracy both in the horizontal and vertical planes and in the next-generation environment that data will push from the call center right to those responders,” Fontes said.

So locating a 911 caller in, say, a high-rise — a vertical challenge — or a large building with a series of rooms or offices laid out horizontally is becoming easier because of technology improvements.

However, 911 call-takers are still waiting to be classified as first responders and not clerical workers to reap the benefits of that classification.

“Fifty-five years ago it was in large part clerical, secretarial,” Fontes said of the 911-call-taker’s job. “They answered the phone, they wrote the number down.”

In today’s world, he said, the 911 call-taker is truly a first responder and should be given the same health benefits and so forth as other, recognized first responders.

We’ve all heard of the 911 call-taker giving instructions to a frantic caller on what to do in an emergency, whether it be delivering a baby or administering aid to a heart attack victim. It’s become a routine part of the job.

“There’s a lot of stuff today that a 911 professional does that is clearly not secretarial or clerical, and it’s time everyone recognizes this profession for what it is,” Fontes said.