Cassidian: Areas with strong population growth are good targets for next-generation 911

An announcement this week from Cassidian Communications suggests that public service answer points serving areas with high population growth rates are likely to be the first to install next-generation 911 equipment based on IP communication.

Cassidian (formerly PlantCML) said it has deployed a next-generation 911 system for the Montgomery County Emergency Communications District, which serves an area of Texas that experienced population growth of 52% between 2000 and 2009. Areas such as these are seeing their existing 911 systems stretched to the limits and are upgrading to IP-based offerings, even though the new systems cannot yet deliver on IP-based capabilities such as multimedia communications, said Cassidian Communications Vice President of Marketing Tami Timperio. The ability to support multimedia communications is about 12 to 24 months away, Timperio said. In the meantime, PSAPs that move to next-generation 911 systems can benefit from other advantages of IP communications—such as the ability to use distributed call centers to share the call load.