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I HISTORY OF 9-1-1 <br />The concept of a three -digit uniform emergency telephone number has existed for <br />decades in the United States and for even longer in Great Britain and other European <br />countries. In 1957, the National Association of Fire Chiefs recommended the use of a <br />single number for reporting fires. While no action was taken at the time, the concern of <br />the firefighting community set the groundwork for future governmental action. <br />In 1967, a Presidential Advisory Commission recommended establishment of a common <br />nationwide telephone number for public use in an emergency. In November 1967, the <br />FCC met with the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) to find a means <br />of establishing a universal emergency number that could be implemented quickly. In <br />1968 the digits 9-1-1 were reserved for this purpose. Later that same year, the first 9-1- <br />1 call was placed from the Haleyville City Hall in Alabama to the city's police station. <br />In the early 1970's technological advances in communications led to the establishment of <br />Enhanced 9-1-1 (E911) services that originally included 9-1-1 selective routing, automatic <br />location information (ALI) and automatic number identification (ANI). By the end of 1976, <br />9-1-1 was serving about 17 percent of the population of the United States. In 1979, <br />approximately 26 percent of the population of the United States had 9-1-1 service, and <br />nine states had enacted 9-1-1 legislation. At this time, 9-1-1 service was growing at the <br />rate of 70 new systems per year. By 1987, those figures had grown to indicate that 50 <br />percent of the US population had access to 9-1-1 emergency service numbers. <br />E911 eventually evolved to include selective transfer, fixed transfer, alternate routing, <br />default routing, PSAP evacuation (abandonment) routing and call detail record. The ability <br />to automatically identify the location of the telephone from which the call originated made <br />9-1-1 an even more attractive system for urban, multi jurisdictional areas. At the end of <br />the 20th century, nearly 93 percent of the population of the United States was covered by <br />some type of 9-1-1 service. Ninety-five percent of that coverage was Enhanced 9-1-1 (E9- <br />1-1). Currently, 96 percent of the geographic US is currently covered by some type of 9- <br />1-1. <br />Location -based functionality remains at the center of our legacy 9-1-1 system today. <br />When a 9-1-1 call is made, it arrives at the appropriate PSAP after it is routed across the <br />Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) to a special, often dedicated, telephony <br />switching platform called a selective router. To determine routing, the tandem office 9-1- <br />1 selective router queries the selective routing database (SRDB) using the ANI to match <br />the location of the caller to the emergency service number (ESN), which defines the <br />appropriate PSAP. The ESN is predetermined for each possible originating telephone <br />number using master street address guide (MSAG). When the voice call with its <br />associated ANI is delivered to the PSAP, another query is made from the PSAP's <br />equipment to the ALI database, again using the ANI as a search key. The associated ALI <br />record is then returned to the PSAP where the customer premise equipment (CPE) <br />displays the location on the call taker computer display. <br />When wireless telephone service emerged and began to sweep the country in the early <br />1990s, the legacy 9-1-1 network faced another challenge. At that time, wireless phones <br />were not usually used for wireline replacement but rather for mobile calling typically <br />outside of a building. In the E9-1-1 system, location information was based on the fixed <br />13 <br />