The Next Wave? Call Center Preparing to Receive E-911 Texts
November 11, 2014
By TMCnet Staff
Currently, the Rhode Island Department of Public Safety call center in North Scituate, R.I., does not have texting capability. It receives approximately 1,500 phone calls every day, but not a single text message. Its dispatch system is not yet advanced enough to accept texting but that, however, will soon change.
According to a news brief and local news source WPRI, the Department of Public Safety is working to upgrade its facility in North Scituate with the goal of having the ability to receive texts by mid-2015. This goal is in line with an FCC (News - Alert) mandate that, by the end of 2014, all wireless carriers must support text-to-911. In response, E-911 operations across the U.S. are upgrading their equipment so they can work with that protocol. Gregory Scungio, the co-director of the Rhode Island E-911 Emergency Telephone System, explained to WPRI that the group is “ramping up” its operations to make way for communications that could be valuable to a wide range of people.
“It could be someone suffering from a medical episode, it could be someone under duress,” Scungio said. “The deaf and hard of hearing obviously are going to use text so there are times when it is appropriate.”
People who find themselves in abusive situations also stand to benefit from the service. Deb DeBare, executive director of the Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence, commented that abusers could be in the same room as their victims. In situations such as that, texting could provide a secretive way for victims to reach emergency services without having to speak.
The biggest reservation emergency officials appear to have with texting is that people will begin to use it as the default method of interaction with dispatchers. Scungio warned that texting has limitations such as time delay and confusion that may result from auto-corrections or abbreviations. For the deaf, texting may be the only option, but for people able to speak and who feel safe in a situation, a voice call should be the default option.
Rhode Island is not the only state with E-911 officials altering their services to accept a wider array of communications. Officials in Pennsylvania and those in Kansas have reported making changes this year. Some emergency call centers receive hundreds of thousands of calls each year. Texting may limit the number of voice calls they receive; it could, though, increase the number of communications they handle overall because texting makes it possible for hearing disabled individuals to readily reach state officials.