Originally slated to be in place by March 4, next-generation 911 service is now expected to be operational in Greater Sudbury sometime later this year.
“I’m very hopeful,” Greater Sudbury Police Service Communications and Information Technology manager Nathan Dokis told Sudbury.com following Tuesday’s police board meeting.
Next-generation 911 will allow people to text and send files such as images and videos directly to 911 dispatchers, who will also receive more accurate information regarding callers’ location.
The new system will also allow all 911 call centres (Primary Service Access Points, of which there are 272 in Canada, including approximately 80 in Ontario) to freely share information with each other.
Right now, if a call is received in Sudbury but needs to be relayed to another jurisdiction such as North Bay, there’s no easy transfer of information collected. The new system would automatically share data collected in Sudbury to the next jurisdiction.
The local delay in implementation was addressed briefly during Tuesday’s meeting, at which the CRTC’s decision to extend the implementation deadline to March 2027 was discussed.
The extension was granted in response to vendors’ inability to get systems in place across the country, with only 11 of the nation’s 272 systems transitioned thus far, Dokis said.
Tyler Clarke/Sudbury.com
Despite a two-year deadline extension, Dokis told Sudbury.com that GSPS is close enough to rolling out their modern 911 system (approximately 90-per-cent complete) that it should be up and running sometime this year.
“Where we’re sitting is for the actual next generation 911 fibre connections to our backup facility” at the Lionel E Lalonde Centre in Azilda.
Their main communications centre is at GSPS headquarters downtown.
GSPS is working with Bell Canada, while other jurisdictions are working with either Bell, SaskTel or Telus.
GSPS, meanwhile, signed on early, and Dokis said they are anticipated to be one of the first 25 systems in the country to get online this year.
After running their final fibre lines in Azilda, GSPS will be ready to begin testing the system and plan the transition to next-generation 911.
In tandem to these efforts is a facility rehabilitation project at the main communications centre.
“Our data centre, just like our facility, is a number of years old and we’ve outgrown that space, so now, as we look to the future and how we future-proof 911 communications and Greater Sudbury Police Service as a whole, we’re making an investment in a technology now that future-proofs us,” Dokis said.
With GSPS investigating the possibility of getting a new police headquarters constructed, Dokis said they’ll be able to transition the data centre to a new space.
First discussed locally more than a decade ago, a February 2024 next-generation 911 update projected the system to be operational by the third quarter of last year.
When it’s finally in place, the next-generation 911 system will mark the first major system-wide update in approximately 30 years.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
