For Immediate Release

Monday, March 23, 2015

Contact: John Guilfoil
Phone: 617-993-0003

Boxborough is First Community in Massachusetts to Receive New 911 System

Traditional 911 Callers Will Not Notice Difference, but Next Generation 911 System Will Allow Boxborough Police and Fire to Use Latest Technologies

BOXBOROUGH – Police Chief Warren Ryder and the Boxborough Police Department are pleased to announce Boxborough is the first community in the commonwealth to receive Next Generation 911 (NG911) equipment, a massive improvement in emergency call technology created to efficiently handle today’s rising traffic and new technologies.

“Our world has become increasingly technologically sophisticated, and Boxborough residents are generally very tech savvy given their local industry and proximity to Boston,” Chief Ryder said. “These new upgrades will largely assist in our efforts to leverage new multimedia technology in order to improve public safety response.  We are proud to be the first community in the state to have this new system.”

The new NG911 System is an adaptable, fast, and technologically resilient system intended to better serve the needs of communities in emergency response situations.  The Internet Protocol (IP)-based communication system will run over a fiber network and enhance the current 911 system so it can keep up with communication technologies such as e-mail, text, video and instant messaging.  NG911 will even allow digital information in addition to voice, such as pictures, videos, and text messages to be transmitted easily from the public to public safety answering points (PSAPs) and then to emergency responders through the network.

Among several other advantages, the new updates provided by this technology will allow the hearing impaired to have easier access to emergency response, provide emergency responders with possible life-saving information before arriving on-scene, and eventually will allow local 911 centers to receive data from in-vehicle crash notification systems.

Next Generation 911 will standardize the underlying technology of various 911 systems and centralize databases of information.  The system will also connect PSAPs in a network that will allow transferring of calls, distributing overflow of 911 calls to other centers, and will connect PSAPs with private services to handle automatic crash notifications.

“One of the best parts about Next Generation 911 is that traditional callers will not notice the changes,” Chief Ryder said. “If you have an emergency, just dial 911 as always.”

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