“911, What’s Your Emergency?” – Looking Ahead to the Next 50 Years of 911

By Mo Katibeh, AT&T Business CMO

NextGen 911 solutions like AT&T ESInet™ offer increased reliability, resiliency and security when transferring calls based on location tracking or managing call volumes. All of which is critical in driving a more seamless response and better outcomes. NextGen 911 solutions also allow the public to communicate with 911 in more ways – enabling the receipt of not just voice communications, but also text, data, photos and videos. It’s up to each state and locality to determine when they’re ready to transition to NextGen 911 capabilities. And we’re proud to be working with several states and localities as they plan for and make the transition to NextGen 911.

Take the state of Kansas for example. Kansas initiated the first statewide deployment of AT&T ESInet™ in 2017. Today, nearly 60 PSAPs are on the platform serving over 1.3 million people. And in North Carolina, AT&T ESInet has been deployed in the cities of Durham and Raleigh-Wake. The platform was in place during Hurricane Florence and helped PSAPs in the affected area. During the hurricane, citizens placed over 225,000 calls to 911 statewide – helping route calls appropriately to get help to citizens faster. The state’s goal is to have all 127 PSAPs migrated to ESInet by the end of 2021.

As we look to the future, we’re not only changing how the public communicates with 911 but also “what” can communicate with 911. We envision increased opportunities to bring more “things” into the public safety fold. Technologies like AT&T ESInet, smart cities solutions and FirstNet are helping this vision become a reality.