Maryland updating 911 system to allow for text and multimedia messaging

Soon Maryland residents will be able to make emergency calls via “voice, text, data and multimedia messages,” according to the Washington Times.
The Maryland Board of Public Works awarded on July 11 a seven-year contract worth $7,126,430.11 to Columbia-based Frequentis USA, Inc. to help implement Next Generation 911. That process won’t begin until October 1, and complete functionality statewide won’t be available immediately, reports the Times.

In the near term, the system will give 22 Maryland State Police barracks that serve as secondary 911 answering stations access to data about emergency callers, [Maryland State Police spokesman Michael] Roosa said. Currently, these locations do not have the ability to automatically determine a person’s phone number or location, which causes problems if a call disconnects after it’s been transferred to a police call-taker. And information from barracks in one part of the state cannot be transferred to another, he said. [more]

Next Generation 911 will run on networkMaryland, Maryland’s “public-sector high-speed network,” according to the Times.
Frequentis USA is a branch of the main group, Frequentis AG, whose headquarters is in Austria. According to its website, Frequentis AG is an “international supplier of communication and information systems in … air traffic management and public safety & transport.”