Wednesday, July 30, 2025 3:30-4:30 PM
Josh Briggs – AT&T Program Manager and Principal Architect; Stephanie Conner – Western Regional Coordinator (NC 9-1-1 Board); Greg Dotson – NMAC Manager (NC 9-1-1 Board); Kristen Falco – Eastern Regional Coordinator (NC 9-1-1 Board); Pokey Harris – Executive Director (NC 9-1-1 Board); Matt McLamb – State Geographic Information Officer (NC 9-1-1 Board); Tom Rogers – Network Engineer and Program Manager (NC 9-1-1 Board); Brian Short – North Central Regional Coordinator (NC 9-1-1 Board)
In 2016, Bill 730 was passed in the North Carolina House. This established a Special Reserve Fund to establish and implement a statewide 9-1-1 board. During this process, AT&T/FirstNet was selected as the provider of core services with the costs directly billed to the 9-1-1 board and provided to the ECCs at no cost. In addition to the Board being established, NG9-1-1 was implemented to all 124 ECCs. This included a statewide Emergency Services Internet Protocol Network (ESInet), alternate and abandonment 9-1-1 call routing, interoperability between PSAPs, and investment in GIS.
When the system was established, the Board encouraged PSAPs to have more than the one mandatory backup, with four or more as the preference. These “friends”, as they are referred to by agencies in N.C., play an important role with statewide interoperability.
In September 2024, this system was put to the test when Hurricane Helene inflicted hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damage to the southeast, including the 9-1-1 infrastructure. With the storm approaching, the NC 9-1-1 Board and FirstNet established a game plan that would automatically reroute calls. While this plan was a good start, it ended up getting thrown to the side when the damage was far more severe than anticipated. Instead of the anticipated five counties being without phone service, 19 ECCs were forced to reroute calls, 17 of which were in abandonment status. During a time when some call centers were experiencing upwards of a 13,000% increase in call volume, the ability to load balance this influx of calls in real time to the other ECCs was crucial. The engineers of the 9-1-1 board were able to look at real-time call loads and receive feedback from the assisting ECCs and balance the load among the agencies handling the calls.
Meanwhile, in Madison County, N.C., their last-mile phone service had been completely and totally destroyed with no estimate for restoration. For over a month, other ECCs handled their calls while Madison County waited patiently to take back over. When it was apparent this wasn’t happening anytime soon, members of the Board made the decision to test the FirstNet backup system as a short-term solution. This made Madison County the first county in N.C. to receive calls over FirstNet. More than nine months later, the backup-as-a-primary system is still holding strong, allowing them to finally handle their own call load.
To the N.C. 9-1-1 Board, the success of the NG9-1-1 system and statewide interoperability validated their investment. Having these systems and redundancies in place allowed 9-1-1 calls to continue to be answered throughout the costliest and deadliest storm in North Carolina history.
Written by William Allison
