Friday, September 26, 2025

911 in USA - an overview

FCC makes rules that require telecom companies to provide 911 infrastructure

not sure how that is funded

the basic idea is that 911 is available everywhere - and 911 handles
all emergencies - police, fire, and ambulance

FCC requires that 911 calls be delivered to PSAPs by the telecom companies

each state has a 911 Office - they set rules and distribute money
raised by taxes on telephones etc

PSAPs are operated by state, county, local, regional agencies - in a
few cases - PSAPs are operated by military bases - there might be 1 or
2 federal 2ndary PSAPs in the DC area that are not military

generally speaking - all PSAP use radio channels allocated by the FCC
to dispatch emergency units

PSAPs are typically funded by a mixture of funding sources - telephone
taxes pay for infrastructure - local taxes pay for staffing

obviously there are major problems with the existing systems - just
yesterday 1 fiber optic cable cut took out 911 service for LA and MS -
previously there have been multi statewide and regional and even
nationwide 911 system failures - text and video calls to 911 are
sparse - PSAPs basically face zero public scrutiny - look at Dave
Statter vs the DC 911 system - most PSAPs are self regulated

basic guidelines for PSAPs are - pick up phone within 10 seconds in
90% of cases - dispatch units within 1 minute - AI can probably drop
that to 1 second - but no one puts any pressure on the PSAPs for
excellence - and the politicians just dont care - because the rich
people dont care - they never call 911 - they have millions of armed
guards protecting them

=====================

wikipedia article about 911 -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/911_(emergency_telephone_number)

pretty sure that the info about funding PSAPs is wrong - we have seen
thousands of local budgets that show payroll expenditures for
dispatchers - and we rarely see any salary reimbursements from any
other funding sources (such as states or feds or phone taxes)

No comments:

Post a Comment