California’s move to abandon a plan revamping the state’s antiquated 911 system, after spending hundreds of millions on the project, has critics fuming. 

In 2019, California began working toward becoming the first state to institute a regionalized approach to implement its Next Generation 911 system, which was replacing 1970s-era technology. Instead of the statewide system traditionally used, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services hoped a regionalized approach would prevent a single point of failure from causing a widespread outage by implementing three regional sectors and a fourth “prime” backup provider for statewide coverage.