June 11-15
DISPATCH Monthly Magazine

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Monday
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SLC Police-Fire Comm
VECC
My Salt Lake City

We've been to Salt Lake City before. Once it was snowing so heavily that driving the Interstate was limited to 20 mph, and it was so cold that our front windshield cracked where the hot defroster blast hit the glass. The other time we slipped through SLC for Park City, a well-known ski resort. We were there during the spring--not winter--and the only things moving down the slopes were toboggans in concrete slides.

As the NENA conference proceeds, we'll activate the links above each day, and as we make site visits. We'll also try to keep up with all the photos we take, and create an on-going album of the event for your review.

Don't expect to see too much at this address: 5885 W. 5360 South, in West Valley City. It's the site of the new Valley Emergency Comm Center, where they just broke ground.

Speaking of West Valley, the city's police chief recently declared that dispatchers would screen out requests for non-injury auto accident reports (absent DUI or other circumstance) to improve response times for other types of incidents. But after 50 citizen complaint within 3 weeks, Chief Alan Kerstein retracted the policy. That reportedly makes Salt Lake City the only agency in the state does not routinely respond to non-injury accidents.

Besides us, the PSTC training team will be at the NENA convention, including Kevin Willet and Richard Behr. They'll be posting daily "musings" from the conference on their email list--check the archive or join to automatically receive their reports.

  

NENA Faces Many 911 Issues

Wireless 911--Still Not Cranked Up
When Will PBXs Have ANI/ALI?
FCC Regulations Are Becoming More Complex

Check our tour of Salt Lake City in the link to the left!

1999 was not an entirely successful year for the National Emergency Number Association (NENA), even according to its leaders. For each of their attempts to advance the nation's 911 system, there seemed to be resistance, debates, technology issues, regulations and other obstacles to overcome.

But any gloom at the 2000 Annual Conference of NENA should disappear as over 2,500 attendees swoop into beautiful Salt Lake City to learn, meet old friends and exchange the latest information about 911. And again this year, DISPATCH Monthly Magazine was at the conference, providing same-day coverage of the activities through stories and photographs.

Certainly the technical issues of 911 have become more complex in the past two or three years. But that's nothing compared to the accompanying politics, federal regulation, negotiations over standards and alliance-making. In 2000, there's a good argument that technicians have taken a back seat to the politicians in making 911 work.

At the same time, there is an undercurrent of change within NENA, from a strictly 911-oriented organization, to one that's concerned with the entire public safety communications chain. The group's annual conference includes seminars on topics not solely related to 911 this year, including radio.

Against this background is the slow pace of Phase I wireless 911 by comm centers--reported to be less than 10 percent--and the uncertain outlook for implementing Phase II some time after the "deadline" of October 2001. The FCC is almost overwhelmed by today's wireless technology focus, and is straining to keep up with all of the markets who want a piece of the location market--where does that leave public safety, which has no financial clout? And rounding out the regulatory issues is the way PBXs handle 911 calls--they don't transmit ANI/ALI information. What will the FCC do about this issue?

Lastly, there are other 911 issues to handle: how should uninitialized phones be handled by the 911 system, and how will the FCC's "strongest signal" ruling really work once phone so equipped start hitting the airwaves?

Adding spice to the conference is the location itself--it's where emergency medical dispatching (EMD) was"invented" by Dr. Jeff Clawson way back in 1978, and where a rare tornado swept through the downtown area in Aug. 1999, putting the city's police-fire comm center on high alert (28 separate area agencies responded to the incident). Of course, the clean air, sunny skies and surrounding 11,000-foot mountains aren't something to ignore, either. Hey, even Tony Bennett was in town during the conference (June 16th at Abravanel Hall)!

NENA expanded its conference this year with the inclusion of a World Congress, which covered international emergency number issues, "under varying geo-political environments." According to the association, the Congress is part of NENA defining its role as "the International Leader in public safety telephony."

NENA expected over 2,500 to attend this year's conference, and over 100 companies to exhibit their 911-related products. They hosted some 75 educational sessions concentrated in several tracks--operations, training, public education, ADA, database management and GIS, contingency planning, administration, national issues, personal development, media relations, wireless and technical issues.

For the first time, NENA also presented a limited-seating time management workshop--What Matters Most. Two sessions will be offered on Tuesday to the first 100 persons requesting tickets at the NENA membership booth.

There were three pre-conference educational sessions--The 9-1-1 Puzzle, Managing the 9-1-1 Center, and E9-1-1 Database management. These fee-based courses were given on the Sunday before the conference begins.

This year's keynote speaker was ABC-TV's John Stossel, who spoke on Pandering to Fear: The Media Crisis Mentality.

There were also tours of the local comm centers--Salt Lake City's police and fire center, Valley Emergency Communications Center (7 agencies), and the Salt Lake Communications Center (state agencies). We took two of the tours, and posted descriptions and photographs here on our Web site the week of the conference.

Here's Everything

To help you prepare for the trip, we've assembled some Web links. Have fun!