AT&T, Kansas Collaborate to Deliver New NextGen 9-1-1 Services

AT&T1 and the Kansas 9-1-1 Coordinating Council continue to improve the 9-1-1 experience in the state. Kansas will be the first statewide deployment of AT&T ESInet.

AT&T ESInet is a new NextGen 9-1-1 solution that provides IP-based call routing services to emergency response centers. It will help Kansas boost 9-1-1 reliability, speed emergency responsiveness and improve disaster recovery.

For Kansans, this means a faster, more reliable 9-1-1 experience. This builds on Kansas’ previous investment to modernize its outdated public safety technology with a NextGen 9-1-1 hosted call handling solution from AT&T.

“Updating our 9-1-1 infrastructure is key to keeping our people safe, and selecting AT&T was an obvious choice,” said Dick Heitschmidt, chairman of the Kansas 9-1-1 Coordinating Council and Hutchinson chief of police. “AT&T provides our public safety community with a comprehensive NextGen 9-1-1 solution, delivering the value, expertise and teamwork needed to create the current and future experiences our residents expect. It’s our goal to stay on the cutting edge of public safety, and AT&T ESInet will help to make that a reality.”

With AT&T ESInet, Kansas will have more sophisticated capabilities to route calls based on the caller’s geographic location. Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) will also be able to manage and route advanced communications like text messaging to 9-1-1. In the future, Kansas PSAPs will be able to support pictures and videos sent via text message. This is crucial in today’s mobile environment where more than 70% of the calls made to 9-1-1 come from a mobile device.2

“AT&T ESInet will help propel Kansas into the next generation of public safety. It’ll give Kansas emergency services an advanced network to better meet the needs of residents, first responders and 9-1-1 call takers today and tomorrow,” said Jon Wellinger, assistant vice president, AT&T Global Public Sector.

Since AT&T ESInet is a highly secure and resilient nationwide service, it will give Kansas access to geographically diverse and redundant call processing locations throughout the country.

This will let the state work with other ESInet-enabled 9-1-1 agencies nationwide to:

•Maintain service during a natural or man-made disaster.
•Help save precious time by routing calls and texts correctly.
•Automatically route calls to neighboring PSAPs when call volumes spike.

Other benefits include access to:

•A defense-in-depth, private network with multiple layers of security – like firewalls and intrusion detection/prevention. This will help protect Kansas 9-1-1 infrastructure from cyber threats.
•Industry standard components that will give the state backward compatibility with legacy 9-1-1 systems and services.

The capabilities that NextGen 9-1-1 technologies will give to PSAPs and the public will become a necessity3. Working with AT&T, Kansas is on track to move 75% of its PSAPs to NextGen 9-1-1 hosted call handling by the end of this year4.

“We’ve long supported Kansas public safety needs, and we are proud to continue our great relationship, helping Kansas on its mission to future-proof its 9-1-1 infrastructure,” said Wellinger.

By making it easier to manage 9-1-1 calls, AT&T ESInet will help Kansas public safety resources go further, so they can focus on what matters most: protecting people and saving lives.

AT&T is a leader in first responder connectivity. We’ve been enabling and innovating public safety communications for nearly 140 years. We will continue this commitment as we build America’s first-ever nationwide broadband network dedicated to first responders.