Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: E911 -- All Operators Are Busy Message-ID: <10031@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 23 Jul 90 08:03:21 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Lines: 25 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 507, Message 7 of 11 "John C. Fowler" <0003513813@mcimail.com> writes: > Surely not "Thank you for calling 911. All of our operators are > currently busy, but if you will hold, the next available operator will > assist you." In the first month of operation, the Santa Clara County E911 did just that. There was a MAJOR stink, particularly fanned by the media, and those in charge of the project were called on the carpet. The initially offered explanation? "Well, a lot of the time there isn't a lot of traffic and we can't just have people sitting around doing nothing most of the time." Needless to say, this didn't fly very well. Ultimately the solution was along the lines of that described by Patrick, with calls being routed to alternate positions. But one interesting problem of 911 surfaced at this time. Sometimes the system is overloaded by multiple calls reporting the same major event. Even though only one call would be sufficient to summon aid for the incident, the PSAP has no instantaneous way of knowing that a cluster of calls are not for separate incidents. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !