Texas 911 System is Constant State of Upgrades
Sept. 24--A 50-cent surcharge on all telephone bills helps give all Smith County residents' access to emergency services.
The Smith County 911 district operates on a $1.9 million budget, with its income coming from a combination of grants and charges on cellphones and landlines, District Director Bill Morales said.
The organization's budget is approved annually by a simple majority of the 11 cities within Smith County, and representatives from each city as well as the county serve on its board of directors. The budget goes into effect on Oct. 1.
The district maintains and operates six calling hubs in the county that forward emergency calls made to 911 to the closest responding police, fire or ambulance service. They maintain the system and train new dispatchers how to use the equipment, but do not actually employ the people answering the calls.
The hubs transfer calls to the Tyler, Lindale and Overton police departments, Smith County Sheriff's Office, Texas Department of Public Safety and to the East Texas Medical Center EMS.
The majority of 911's 2016 budget covers "system expenses," including new equipment. That accounts for 54 percent of the budget, or $1.06 million. Expenses to operate the system accounts for 25 percent, or $489,000, and personnel take up 22 percent, or $425,000.
Morales said the district also maintains a database of address and phone numbers.
"(That's why) as a kid when you called 911 and hung up, and thought you got away with it, the cops show up," Morales said.
The district is constantly in a state of upgrades, Morales said, to keep up with the mobile world. The original system, created in 1986, was set up to accommodate landline phones, and the district has slowly upgraded to handle mobile phones and then to increase tracking accuracy.
"If you call 911 and put your phone under the seat, we can track you," he said. "If you're in a crash and don't know where you are, that technology is location accuracy for cellphones," he said.
In 2004, the county had roughly 180,000 landlines. Today the county has about 80,000. Morales said one landline is often replaced by several cellphones, which helps fund the upgrades needed to the system.
Morales said the district is debt free and pays for all upgrades in cash. Last year they completed a roughly $2 million upgrade to begin transitioning the 911 network to handle text messages, photos and video.
"People ... don't want to call 911, they want to text 911," Morales said. "(The system) was built with copper wire. It was a voice network, but now we have to open that network to handle voice, data, pictures, video -- whatever people want to try to send to 911."
The new upgrades use the TTY technology, a service used by hearing-impaired people to transcribe typed text into words. The system is not yet able to handle photos or video.
"We are about six months to a year away from a software upgrade that will make it look like a Facebook message that comes on a dispatcher's screen," Morales said.
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