Dubois County 911 has many updates planned in near future
The Dubois County Communications 911 Advisory Board met Jan. 17 and 911 Communications Director Janice Love opened the meeting by explaining some problems the communications center was having with equipment.
The center consists of three stations the dispatchers utilize for 911 calls and communications with police, fire, and first responders. Station One has had several problems and despite diagnostics from Frontier Communications, electricians, and even the City of Jasper a specific problem has not been diagnosed with the equipment.
According to Love the station has caused two uninterrupted power supplies to fail over the past month and it is also shocking the dispatchers when they plug into the station.
In case of a failure with the 911 Communications Center, control of dispatch calls are transferred to Jasper Police Department’s Dispatch Center and Pike County 911 could also receive the emergency calls
Love was at a loss for a recommendation for the station as no one has been able to diagnose the issue and recommended with the proposed upgrade to the Interact system (story here), the hardware be updated. Interact is the new data storage and sharing system being pursued by all Dubois County law enforcement and can be utilized by fire departments and first responders.
Love explained that an issue with upgrading to Interact would be the transfer of data from the current system to the new program. Love stated the manual transfer of the data was estimated to cost $140 per hour but did not know how long it would take to manually transfer all of the data.
The Board directed Love to determine the cost and to investigate whether Interact will conduct the data transfer as part of the implementation process.
Love recommended with the upgrade to Interact the Communications Center purchase new computers to run the software. The current computers are dated and having issues.
The Board approved her seeking estimates to purchase three new computers.
Love then informed the board they would be implementing the new narrow band frequency for communications the week of Feb. 27. The FCC has dictated the changes from 25 Khz on VHf to 12.5 Khz effective by Jan. 1 of 2013 or when the Communications Center applies for its license renewal.
Love stated the FCC has indicated the frequency would be cut in half again in the future but no dates have been set.
Love explained the phone system at the 911 Call Center has reached end of life and will need to be replaced. Additionally the 911 system itself will reach end of life in a few years and need to be upgraded to the next generation system. Love described some of the features of the next generation systems and how they would incorporate modern forms of communications.
The next 911 Advisory Board meeting was set for June 19.
After the meeting Love demonstrated the 911 Communication Center’s current capabilities. The system is able to locate callers on landlines very easily. When receiving a call the dispatcher can call up a map showing the exact address and location of the landline based phone call, however with cell phones the system will only give a general location and it is not always accurate. After establishing the address of the phone line the map system even allows the dispatcher to pull up a picture of the address to assist in identifying the location for the first responders or police.
As a former Police-Fire Communications Officer in a large city and a different state way back when…we were still using cord pairs and rotary dial phones…I'm certainly sympathetic to the issues and needs at hand here. Still, I recall just a few short years ago that the 911 center both moved and had some rather expensive upgrades, if not at the same time…I can't recall. I'm thinking it involved new consoles and other dispatch equipment and possibly computers. Seems the current problems may be related to some of those recent improvements and new equipment, and if so, what are the chances that this may be under some kind of warranty, or has the vendor-contractor who did the work been contacted?