Alameda County E911 History

July 9, 2003 is the 25th birthday of the Alameda County (Calif.) 911 system. Besides providing 911 service to more than a million people locally, the Alameda 911 system was nationally significant as the first with selective routing -- the ability to automatically route emergency 911 calls to the proper city or jurisdiction in a metropolitan area, based exclusively on the installed location of the calling phone.

Previous 911 systems, now called "basic 911", could direct 911 calls for initial answering only on the basis of the phone company's exchange, and central office boundaries. The non-alignment of municipal and phone switching boundaries or "overlap problem" was a major obstacle to the adoption of 911 throughout the nation. With few exceptions, basic 911 was being implemented only in communities having no overlap problem--generally due to the city's remoteness or a natural barrier. New York City installed basic 911 in 1968, the very year that AT&T announced that number's availability for emergency use. The island City of Alameda was also able to implement basic 911, but it was one of only 6 California cities planning to have 911 before 1975. The selective routing technology (and pioneering Caller ID for dispatch purposes) proved so successful in Alameda County that "Enhanced 911" now serves more than 95% of the nation's phones and every metropolitan area in the nation.

The Alameda Trial system was developed by Bell Labs and implemented by Pacific Telephone with a $1.7 million grant the county received from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. It selectively routed calls to the police departments of all 13 cities, the East Bay Regional Parks, the University of California Berkeley and the Alameda County Sheriff's Communication Center. If not a police emergency, the 911 call could be correctly transferred to the proper fire or ambulance dispatching organization with a press of a single "FIRE' or "MEDICAL" button. The 911 routing and one button transfer data for each new phone is determined by the phone company at the time of its installation using government-provided geographic and jurisdictional boundary information.

Though originally conceived in St. Louis, Missouri as a possible solution to its severe overlap problems, part of Alameda County (the East Bay Exchange) was picked by AT&T and LEAA as a smaller and more suitable site for testing a system that might not prove cost-effective. As the result of a two year preliminary study which weighed basic alternatives it was decided to go ahead with selective routing and include all of the county. Pacific Telephone (now part of SBC) completed the installations in time for a May 31, 1978 switchover but a month's delay was introduced to allow the cities to reconsider their participation after the June 6 vote on California's Prop 13. Even though Proposition 13 with its dire local budget impacts did pass, the delay proved needless and the first enhanced 911 system went into operation throughout all of Alameda County on Sunday July 9, 1978.

On February 12, 1979 the Miami-Dade County area in Florida became the second Enhanced 911 system installed and St. Louis, with its more than 100 emergency phone numbers, became the third.

We've received additional information about the Alameda County project, including memos from 1981 that show exactly what company was doing the work:

The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company
Information Systems Organization
Planning, Organization and Support Department
BSC/RSC, Marketing, SORD and Computer Services Projects Division

The selective-routing E911 system in Alameda County included one-button transfer to adjacent PSAPs, and to a 24-hour language translation service operated by the Eden Area Information and Referral Agency. The county installation was paid for with a $2.3 million grant from the federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), plus $405,000 from the state. At the time, only Monterey and San Benito County had B911 operating county-wide, and only a very few local cities and towns had B911. San Francisco did not have 911 service in 1978 because, as mayor George Moscone told the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper, "It will cost a zillion dollars." He estimated it would cost $1.1 million and another $120,000 to operate it. Despite his opinion, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution urging him to implement the service using state money.

In 1972 California passed the Warren-911-Emergency Assistance Act (Sec. 53100~ Govt. Code) to establish state-wide 911, and on April 7, 1977 (effective July 1, 1977) it passed one-half percent 911 surcharge (Sec. 41007 Revenue & Taxation Code) to fund construction of 911 state-wide. The law allows a surcharge of between 0.50% and 0.75%. The current surcharge is 0.72% and collects about $142 million a year.