911

ENHANCED 9-1-1 PROGRAM

The East Texas Council of Governments (ETCOG) is responsible for implementing and providing 9-1-1 services to the following counties: Anderson, Camp, Cherokee, Gregg, Marion, Panola, Rains, Upshur, Van Zandt and Wood County. 9-1-1 provides the vital link between citizens and their emergency responders. This service, since its inception, has been greatly enhanced and many lives have undoubtedly been saved.

About 9-1-1:

House Bill (HB) 9-1-1 passed by the Legislature in 1989 allowed for the 24 councils of governments to implement 9-1-1 in those areas not already being served by 9-1-1 Districts or Home Rule cities. HB 9-1-1 also provided the means of funding this project by establishing a service fee of $.50 per month charged to each telephone customer. The actual planning and implementation in this region is complete with the addition of Marion County that went on line December 2, 1997.

Of course the planning for the future of 9-1-1 continues daily with system replacements and upgrades throughout the 10 county 9-1-1 Region. Cellular call delivery with the implementation of Phase I of the FCC’s Report and Order Docket 94-102 has completed with new towers and network being updated daily. This will deliver the callers telephone number and the location of the tower that relayed the call to the dispatcher, thus narrowing the area needing to be searched when the caller cannot relay location information. Planning Mapped ALI for the relay of location of the cellular caller is continuing. This deployment is referred to as Phase II Wireless.

The Public Utility Commission’s decision to open the telephone industry up to more competitive practices is certainly providing its share of challenges as well. Now we must look at the problems with 9-1-1 call delivery of re-sell vendors, pure resell vendors, premises based sellers and number portability.

The provisioning of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) again brings great challenges to the world of 9-1-1. VoIP provides telephone services that initiate via the Internet. Because solutions must interface with our tandems as required by the Rules of the CSEC, today we are not able to display any incoming information and most companies stipulate in their contract for services that they cannot provide 9-1-1 connectivity. In many cases, they do at least provide you the ability to dial 9-1-1 and have it “call forward” to the administrative telephone number of the PSAP responsible for your area. However, that dispatcher has no telephone number, name or location for the caller.

Additional information can be obtained from the Texas Commission on State Emergency Communications (CSEC).