Bringing the nation’s 9-1-1 system into the digital age is moving forward but slowly, according to a report released Tuesday by a public safety and emergency communications company.
In its 2025 State of the 9-1-1 Report, Longmont, Colo.-based Intrado Life & Safety noted that the transition from legacy to next-generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) is well underway in the United States, but implementation has been gradual. Only a portion of the country is covered by at least some features of NG9-1-1 service.
Full nationwide coverage of NG9-1-1 is an ongoing process, it added, with some states and counties issuing RFPs regularly for almost a decade.
NG9-1-1 incorporates digital and internet-based technologies delivered via IP-based networks. It expands emergency communications services beyond the core functionality of legacy 9-1-1, facilitating the use of enhanced capabilities of IP-based devices and networks.
“Today we have limited information coming across what we call E911 or enhanced 9-1-1 systems,” said April Heinze, vice president and chief of 9-1-1 operations at the National Emergency Number Association (NENA), in Alexandria, Va.
“Those systems are built off legacy copper wire infrastructure created back in 1968 when 9-1-1 was created,” she told TechNewsWorld. “NG9-1-1 moves that infrastructure into fully IP-based systems, so it will allow for things like multimedia text messages and other data-rich information to be delivered to the 9-1-1 systems that are not capable of being delivered in a legacy environment.”
It also means replacing older messaging technologies, such as TTY, with newer ones, like RCS and RTT. “The legacy technology means slow, clunky, half-duplex communications,” said Chandy Ghosh, general manager and COO of Sinch, a global communications company that specializes in providing advanced 911 solutions.
“RCS delivers real-time chat capabilities and benefits like read receipts and multimedia support,” she told TechNewsWorld. “Adopting RCS and RTT will help local jurisdictions with more reliable texting capabilities and better serve their hearing and speech-impaired communities.”
Legacy System Retirement Risks
The Intrado report pointed out that one of the biggest challenges to the full deployment of NG9-1-1 will be retiring the infrastructure that has been in place for decades, a task that can be likened to changing aircraft engines in the middle of a flight.
The transition to NG9-1-1 is not just a matter of taking down the old systems, the report explained. Something must remain in place during the transition to handle digital and analog traffic seamlessly with “five nines” — 99.999% availability.
Making matters worse, the report continued, many of the legacy 9-1-1 systems currently in place are more than 30 years old. Manufacturers no longer produce components for the core telephony systems of 9-1-1, and many parts can only be sourced from the used parts market.
As irreplaceable hardware reaches and surpasses its natural lifespan and becomes increasingly difficult to support, the commercial cost of sustaining these systems increases exponentially, it added.
Because some of this equipment is now used solely by 9-1-1 systems, public safety stakeholders who are not prepared to begin transitioning to NG9-1-1 might end up assuming the full cost of ownership — an unreasonable burden and poor use of scarce budgetary resources.
To put it another way, the report noted that while the cost of moving to NG9-1-1 may seem expensive now, the cost of delaying a move or not moving at all may be even greater.
Cyberthreats to 9-1-1 Systems
Cybersecurity is also a challenge for Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs), which are where 9-1-1 calls are received. PSAPs are starting to address cybersecurity, but adequate cybersecurity defenses remain a challenge, the report noted, and more PSAPs need to take action to protect their systems.
The advent of quantum computing poses a threat to the entire 9-1-1 ecosystem, according to the Intrado report.
“9-1-1 systems are a high-value cyber target,” said Andre McGregor, co-founder and CEO of ForceMetrics, in Denver, a data provider for first responders.
“When you look at a person having an emergency, the first number they’re thinking to call is 9-1-1,” he told TechNewsWorld. “So people need to feel safe and comfortable with it. If it goes down due to a ransomware attack, or there’s call spoofing that messes with call routing, then you’re going to have a real problem with public trust.”
He noted that the top attack vector for 9-1-1 systems is ransomware, where cybercriminals lock a user’s data and demand payment, usually in the form of cryptocurrency, to unlock it.
“Oftentimes, the 911 authority is being operated by the police department, emergency management agency, or a city or county, so it gets wrapped up into the ransomware of the entire jurisdiction, which means the 9-1-1 calls are not being taken by that location,” McGregor explained.
“But 911 is also very resilient,” he added. “So when a call doesn’t go through to a specific authority, it actually gets rolled over to the neighboring authority, and they’ll pick up the phone. The person calling doesn’t always see the impact. It’s the people on the ground who are taking the calls that do.”
PSAPs Shift to Cloud-Based Systems
The report also found that more Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) are transitioning to cloud-based call handling, away from traditional, on-premises solutions. “Migrating PSAPs to the cloud modernizes traditional 911 infrastructure by providing resilience, scalability, and real-time adaptability absent from on-site systems,” said Milankumar Rana, a software engineer advisor with FedEx.
“Dynamic routing of emergency calls made possible by cloud-based PSAPs improves response times and reduces the risk of service disruption due to local outages, natural disasters, or cyberattacks based on caller location and call volume,” he told TechNewsWorld.
“Crucially, in the multimodal communication environment of today, cloud migration also provides Next Generation 9-1-1 capabilities — text, video, and IoT sensor data,” he continued. “For situational awareness, it facilitates simpler integration with analytics and artificial intelligence. It also enables centralized system updates to improve security and compliance by means of greater coordination across jurisdictions.”
“At last, a major consideration is cost,” Rana added. “While allowing elastic scaling to match demand spikes, cloud architecture lowers hardware capital costs.”
AI Tools Support Overflow Call Response
Another key finding in the report is that AI tools are becoming increasingly available to PSAPs, which could help address several current challenges. “We’re seeing AI assisting call takers. It’s in no way replacing call takers,” said Intrado VP of Technology John Snapp, who co-authored the report with VP for Government Affairs Lauren Kravetz.
“It’s being used to answer non-emergency calls,” he told TechNewsWorld. “Those lines often have really long wait times. They don’t have enough call takers, so they’re typically staffed by the same call takers who handle 9-1-1. So the 9-1-1 calls come first.”
“The AI is being used to answer those calls in a very natural language way using large language models and other types of artificial intelligence,” he continued.
“But more importantly, about 20% of those calls are typically emergency calls,” he added. “So the AI can detect an emergency and immediately transfer it to the emergency queue so it can be handled by humans.”
“We also see a real problem in 9-1-1 with swatting — people making false claims that some event was happening that needs a SWAT team dispatched somewhere. AI is a great tool to help look for patterns, voices that may be coming in, the way they’re saying things, matching up locations, to give a threat score of how likely the call is potentially a swatting event.”
