Sheriffs warn Idaho’s 911 relies on aging systems and urge move to next‑generation service

Sheriffs and public‑safety advocates told the Idaho House Local Government Committee that Idaho’s 911 system is built on legacy technology, is increasingly failing with modern cell‑phone calls, and needs funding and a planned migration to Next Generation 911.

The presentation by Kelly Brasfield of the Idaho Association of Counties and sheriffs from Payette and Bonneville counties outlined specific 911 failures and said the state needs sustained investment to update mapping, call routing and location services. "We are living on a dying system," Bonneville County Sheriff Sam Hulse said.

Brasfield said the state still relies on CAMA trunks and legacy 911 trunks, terms she described as 40‑year‑old technology, and that the statutory surcharge that funds 911 has not been adjusted since 1988. Sheriff Andy Creech of Payette County described recent incidents he said illustrate current failures: a parent who called 911 seven times and whose location was not transmitted, outages tied to switch upgrades that left 10 counties unable to receive calls for several minutes, trunks in Fremont County that allow only one concurrent incoming 911 call at times, and VoIP calls routed to Canada instead of local dispatch centers.

"On January thirtieth of this year, there was a call from a parent who was calling about their baby having difficulty breathing. That parent called seven times, 911. And each time they called, their location was not transmitted with the call," Creech said. He said RapidSOS, a private data service, was used to identify that caller’s location.

Creech and Hulse told the committee that most 911 calls are now from cell phones and that current call‑routing systems were designed for landlines. Creech said cell‑based location services used by private companies can already provide more precise x, y and z location (including building floor level) than Idaho’s 911 phase‑2 tower triangulation in many places.

Committee members asked how to pay for an upgrade and whether staffing needs would change. Hulse said the fee that supports 911 has not been updated since 1988 and that next‑generation systems will bring ongoing costs in addition to upfront migration expenses. He said Idaho is likely to have more than one core system because of geography, increasing the complexity of cost estimates.

The presenters gave a statewide call count for 2023: 594,076 calls. They also said the Federal Communications Commission estimated a national migration cost in the neighborhood of $14 billion in a 2024 report. The Idaho Association of Counties said one county had begun contracting for Next Generation 911 in 2024.

The presenters asked legislators to consider funding, technical planning, and an Office of Performance Evaluations (OPE) review. "We as an association have been working on a request for JLOC to review to have an OPE report done on emergency communications," Brasfield said.

Committee members expressed concern about citizen confidence in 911 and asked whether failures were being tracked locally. Hulse said counties try to track incidents but that determining where failures occurred — in legacy trunks, the cell network, or elsewhere — can be difficult. He said redundancy and failovers would be important design goals for Next Generation 911.

The committee did not take a formal vote on funding in the hearing session covered by the transcript. Presenters said they would provide state and county call‑volume numbers on request and asked for legislative help in exploring funding options and technical standards.

Ending: The committee moved on to its next agenda items after the presentation, but presenters said they would follow up with requested statistics and asked members for support of an OPE review and future policymaking on 911 modernization.