FCC chairman discusses 911 advances

HARRISBURG -- Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai toured Saline County's 911 Central Dispatch center Tuesday afternoon to get a firsthand look at an emergency call center in a rural area.

Pai has been calling for improvements to communication infrastructure in rural areas to ensure better access to emergency services and high-speed Internet.

On Tuesday, Pai was joined by U.S. Rep. John Shimkus, R-Collinsville and State Sen. Dale Fowler, R-Harrisburg, for both a tour of Saline County's call center and a roundtable discussion of rural communication access at Morello's Restaurant.

Tracy Felty, Saline County Central Dispatch and E-911 Director, gave Pai explanations of how his county's system worked while fielding questions from the FCC chairman.

Saline County's system covers emergency dispatch for a large geographical area, including Gallatin, Pope and Hardin counties. Other nearby counties also are served, sometimes, according to how emergency calls are routed, Felty said.

Pai said he was impressed at how much geographical area Salin.e County Central Dispatch covers.

"That's a great model for rural areas," Pai said. "I come from rural Kansas, so it's of particular significance to me."

Felty said the county's system has benefited from a large amount of high-speed fiber optic cable placed by Clearwave Communications.

In addition to the fiber optics, said many improvements had been made to the county's 911 system since the May 8, 2009 "super derecho" storm that caused widespread damage across southern Illinois. At the time, 911 centers in the region relied on a central communications hub in Carbondale. When that hub was damaged, those 911 centers were left with limited functionality. After that time, Saline County's system was updated so that it did not depend on one single communication hub.

Felty said that was a critical improvement, because Central Dispatch became the nerve center of recovery efforts after the Feb. 29 Leap Day tornado that damaged Harrisburg and Ridgway, leaving 8 dead in Harrisburg.

"We normally field about 300 calls a day," Felty told Pai. "We took over 2,400 calls that day."

Pai later hosted a forum about what's known as Next Generation 911, which is designed to improve access to emergency services in rural areas.

"To me, it's a necessity that every American has access to emergency services, and high-speed Internet," Pai said.</group><group id="002016EF-D791-4C52-9376-037217C4AF0C" type="seoLabe