TCT, dispatch centers deal with 911 service disruption

A 911 service disruption that began last Friday morning, Aug. 21, and continued into Saturday night was caused by a complicated series of factors, TCT CEO Richard Wardell reported Tuesday evening.

The disruption caused emergency 911 calls in Big Horn County to be routed to a dispatch center in Worland, which caused come confusion as calls were relayed back to Big Horn County, but calls did go through after a brief delay, Big Horn County acting sheriff Jason Beal said.

“911 systems have become increasingly complex over the years because of changes in technology, the growing use of cell phones and the addition of device-based location services that help emergency responders determine where a call is coming from,” Wardell said. “As a result of these changes, the systems have become much more complicated and interdependent on additional partners and services. During the recent outage, TCT landlines were still able to complete 911 calls to the Big Horn County dispatch center because those calls are managed and maintained within the TCT network.”

The events that began Friday morning and extended into Saturday evening involved a larger network provider that connects telephone providers to the Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) in Cheyenne, Wardell noted, adding that it is through the PSAP that mobile devices and providers that are not directly connected to the county dispatch center terminate calls. The network provider had facilities that were damaged, which took down its services and impacted 911 calls along with other circuits that impaired non-emergency calls in and out of the “Casper tandem,” Wardell said.

“To my knowledge, all carriers other than TCT that send calls to Big Horn County 911 connect through the Cheyenne PSAP to complete calls to Big Horn or Park County. During this outage, the circuits between Basin and Cheyenne were down, so those calls had no path back to Basin or Cody,” Wardell said. “This same event also impacted other circuits needed to complete calls between TCT and other carriers such as area cellular providers. TCT customers could call other TCT customers, and cellular customers could call other cellular customers, but the broken link severely impacted calls between different telephone providers.

“Telephone providers build in many redundancies, but occasionally equipment failures or facility damage can impact services.  At TCT we are always looking to reinforce the network to create the most reliable network, and as technology changes, the methods change and have to adapt.”

There are nationwide changes coming to what is called Nextgen 911 (NG911), Wardell said, stating that NG911 will utilize IP technology that is better suited for the current communication landscape where devices may be mobile and varied in their use such as text to 911 and other methods that are not currently compatible with today’s installed infrastructure and the legacy telecommunications equipment that is coming to the end of its usable life.