July 7, 2015
Phone carriers could impact 911 response time
Depending on the phone carrier used by Cortland County residents, they may see a delay in the time it takes for emergency responders to get to a scene after 911 is dialed — even in a pressing emergency.
The problem was illustrated Monday morning when a 911 call made from a city business not far from the police station was not directed immediately to the city dispatch center but instead to a center outside of the county. The caller, a Cortland Standard employee, found a man unconscious in the newspaper parking lot Monday morning, prompting his call. Since the call needed to be transferred, the response time for the city police and ambulance took about 15 minutes, which was slower than usual. The phone service provider for the newspaper is Finger Lakes Technology Group.
City police could not be reached this morning to comment about what happend to the man.
Scott Roman, director of the county emergency response and communications department, said Monday afternoon that the department depends on phone service providers to have updated records so that calls are transferred to the correct dispatch center. Without the updated records, a phone carrier may transfer a caller who has dialed 911 to a switchboard far from the actual incident they are calling about, he said.
Roman added that rerouted calls usually happen with smaller providers that are not as well known as the bigger carriers such as Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.
“That’s one of the biggest problems we have with the phone carriers,” Roman said. “They don’t always update their records. It’s totally up to the carrier because we don’t run that infrastructure.”
Regarding the recent 911 call from the Cortland Standard office, Roman said since the Finger Lakes Technology Group routes its calls out to a fiber optic network, that call probably was picked up in Ithaca, then in Trumansburg, until it was referred back to Cortland.
Roman added that the fire and police departments do not have control over when they receive the phone calls.
“Once we get the call, we put it right out,” Roman said. “We have a pretty good track record of getting things out.”
Undersheriff Herb Barnhart said Monday afternoon that sometimes the county gets calls from Tompkins or Broome counties but the call does get to the appropriate place eventually.
“It’s designed so we don’t drop a call,” Barnhart said, adding that the closest center will eventually pick up the call. Barnhart also said that from his experience, the transferring of phone calls does not usually have an impact on response times.
Roman said that when calls are rerouted to areas outside of the county it can often be attributed to the use of less popular service carriers for cell phones such as TracFone Wireless and magicJack phone service.
Calls may not be routed to the correct dispatch center, for example, if people are not contacting their service provider to let them know they moved. An example would be if a resident moved their landline device and took it with them to another location.
“That kind of stuff actually happens a lot,” Roman said.
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