Boone County 911 completes switch from Brightspeed to AT&T
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Boone County’s 911 center switched its phone service provider from Brightspeed to AT&T on Wednesday, a week after a Brightspeed outage disrupted 911 service across Mid-Missouri.
Christie Davis with Boone County Joint Communications confirmed the switch Thursday. Boone County Joint Communications’ 911 service went offline Sept. 16 for several hours because of a Brightspeed disruption. During the outage, people who needed emergency assistance were directed to call 311.
The Boone County Office of Emergency Management said the disruption affected 911 centers across Missouri but was concentrated in Mid-Missouri. Boone County announced shortly before 5 p.m. that service had been restored.
Jefferson City and Cole County were also affected by the outage. Jefferson City police said 911 calls continued to come in but had to be rerouted. Service was restored after about four hours.
Jefferson City Police Lt. Curtis Finke said there was no disruption or delay in emergency services during the outage.
The outage happened as Jefferson City works toward modernizing its 911 infrastructure.
In March, the Jefferson City Council tabled a proposal to replace the police department’s older copper-based call-delivery system with a next-generation emergency services internet protocol network, also known as ESInet.
City documents said the newer system would support voice calls, texts and other emergency data while improving call routing. The proposal also included renewing the city’s five-year contract with Intrado for 911 call-handling services and upgrading the system’s hardware.
The project was estimated to cost $458,351 over five years.
Davis said Boone County’s transition took close to two years. The county entered into its contract about one year ago, and implementation took approximately nine months.
The transition was originally scheduled for July but was delayed while the county waited for additional equipment. Davis said previous outages were one factor in the decision, but the change also prepares the county for future Next Generation 911 features.
Under the new system, 911 calls are delivered through AT&T’s secure emergency services internet protocol network instead of the older CAMA trunks and copper lines. Brightspeed remains involved by providing the last-mile fiber connection. Boone County also added a wireless FirstNet connection as another backup if the fiber service fails.
Davis said Boone County’s previous system had one point of failure along the route from Jefferson City. The new system provides additional paths for incoming calls and allows the center to reroute calls to its administrative lines more quickly.
During the Sept. 16 outage, Davis said calls that did not reach the 911 center still appeared in RapidSOS, a mapping system used by dispatchers. That allowed telecommunicators to see where calls originated and return them using phone lines that were still working.
Davis said Boone County could not determine exactly how many emergency calls were affected because the calls were routed through administrative lines, which prevented the center from collecting its usual statistics.
Jefferson City Police Capt. Chad Stieferman said the city is still receiving 911 calls through Brightspeed’s analog CAMA trunks. The city has signed a contract with AT&T for a Next Generation 911 core and anticipates placing the system into service in April.
During last week’s outage, Jefferson City’s 911 calls rolled over to administrative lines. Stieferman said everyone was still able to reach the center, but dispatchers received emergency and nonemergency calls on the same lines and had to determine which calls needed immediate attention.
Stieferman said the AT&T system will use multiple data paths and redundant data centers instead of relying on the single point of failure in the current system. He said the newer infrastructure cannot guarantee that an outage will never happen, but it should reduce the risk of one failure disrupting call delivery.
Jefferson City is also completing a separate hardware refresh for its call-answering equipment. Stieferman said that project includes new servers and workstations through a five-year agreement with Intrado.
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