PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota’s antiquated 911 system will be rebuilt in the next few years to improve responses to emergencies, cut costs and take advantage of new cellphone technologies, the head of a state panel that oversees the 911 system said Wednesday.
The current 33 answering centers now use technology from the 1970s and 1980s, are connected by old copper-wire phone lines and have trouble communicating with each other, said Ted Rufledt Jr., of Rapid City, chair of the South Dakota 911 Coordination Board. South Dakota is joining with other states to develop a Next Generation 911 system that will be based on the same fiber-optic lines used for the Internet and a single operating system that allows dispatch centers to communicate better.
The new system, whose basic infrastructure is expected to be in place within three years, will eventually allow people to send text messages, photos and videos to 911 centers.
“We’ve got to get all these different entities — 911 centers, fire, police and medical — off these separate systems that make it very hard for them to communicate in an emergency and get them on a common system where information, data and voice traffic can be shared to deliver better public safety in the end,” Rufledt said.
The 911 Coordination Board met Wednesday with the staff of a consulting firm that will help develop South Dakota’s Next Generation 911 plan. The L.R. Kimball firm will write a state master plan within the next three months and then help select contractors to provide elements of the new system.
Board member Jeff Carmon said the new system must be reliable.
“As long as I’m convinced the network is going to be available and the service is there, that’s my big thing,” Carmon said.
Rufledt, deputy director of the Pennington County 911 systems, said each of the 33 answering centers across the state now has its own equipment costing up to $500,000. The new system will replace that with core operating equipment that use the same software in two or three locations, providing a common system that allows the centers to communicate better with each other, he said.
If a 911 operator is taking a call now, another caller gets a busy signal, Rufledt said. The upgrade will route such calls to the nearest 911 center, which can handle the emergency, he said.
Once the new system is deployed, it can be modified to use the latest technology installed in phones, Rufledt said.
People with smart phones might sometimes want to be able to send text messages to 911 centers, which would be handy if someone is hiding and doesn’t want to alert an intruder by talking, Rufledt said. People with hearing problems also want to use text messages for such calls, he said. Callers also could send photos or videos taken on their cell phones to help law officers identify criminal suspects.
The current 911 system can immediately locate a cell phone owned by a South Dakota resident with a South Dakota-based service contract, but the upgrade will improve the routing of cellphone calls to centers that can best dispatch help, Rufledt said.
“Hopefully, one to three years from now we’re sitting on a very robust, reliable 911 system that allows us to bring in all the technological advances and hopefully use the money we’ve got much more wisely,” he said.
The South Dakota Legislature last year increased the 911 surcharge collected as part of most telephone bills from 75 cents to $1.25 a month. Part of that money goes to help counties and cities pay for their 911 call centers, but it also is designed to provide about $21 million over the next six years to develop the Next Generation 911, Rufledt said. The 33 call centers last year spent $19.2 million to operate, according to the state Department of Public Safety.
