In demonstrations across the country, Bill Hobgood, project manager for the city of Richmond, Va.’s Department of Information Technology’s public safety team and Automated Secure Alarm Protocol (ASAP) project subject matter expert, begins by playing a recorded call between a central station operator and 911 or PSAP (public safety answering point) call center operator. The two parties have difficulty understanding each other: It takes more than two minutes for the call taker to figure out the correct location before moving on to take the rest of the pertinent information.
The majority of phone communications between central station operators and PSAPs go smoothly, but an average call is time consuming, taking approximately two to three minutes, and the alarm company may never know what came of the dispatch. Furthermore, that two to three minutes is a fairly general approximation, since depending on the type of alarm signal and information involved, as well as a host of other factors, a call can take anywhere from 60 seconds to 30 minutes or longer. An operator with a commercial video verified alarm, for example, may stay on the phone with authorities to guide them to where the suspect is hiding or give them updates on movements if the video is live. Or in other cases, call time may increase because of language barriers, verbal miscommunication, or low volume or static on one or both ends of the call.