Case Study:

Granite County, Montana

Granite County, Montana is the home to 2,632 residents and is the part-time home to many tourists. The total size of the county is 1,733 square miles. Philipsburg, the county seat, is the perfect headquarters in the Rocky Mountains for recreation any time of year. The town of Philipsburg takes great pride in tourism and recreation and was once named Montana's Tourism Community of the Year.

Reduced Response Time With VOIP Network and PC/PSAP Solution

The Challenge

Granite County started this process with nothing more than plain analog telephones. The county's 911 trunks were simply basic analog lines with caller ID boxes. No integration existed between the RMS (records management system) and Criminal Justice systems, and there was no instant recall recording or TDD capability. They wished to become compliant with NENA (National Emergency Number Association) Phase I and II standards. These NENA standards refer to the PSAP's ability to identify the phone number and location of a wireless caller.

The Solution

Amcom Software¹ was brought in to provide a modern PSAP environment for Granite County. First, business partner Infomine of the Rockies deployed a 3Com^® Superstack^® 3 NBX^® VoIP phone system, which was integrated with the Xtend pc/psap™ solution from Amcom to provide access to both the 911 trunks and the administration lines from the call takers intelligent workstation. This was further integrated with a local address database, the SWIFT RMS and the Criminal Justice System, as well as a new SWIFT CAD (computer aided dispatch) system. TDD capability and instant recall are both features of Xtend pc/psap system.

The Result

Granite County saw an immediate benefit in the form of quicker call response time, which resulted in the ability to handle a higher call volume capacity. As a result of deploying the pc/psap solution, the county is now compliant with NENA's Phase I and II standards. The solution's TDD feature meant that the county was now compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Granite County has the ability to expand the phones into other government offices by leveraging the VoIP aspect of the 3Com system. This will provide immediate connectivity to the PSAP from any city office on the 3Com system and allow for a remote PSAP intelligent workstation to eventually be deployed. The next phase will be to integrate with the State of Montana E911 network for access to VoIP based 911 trunks and pre-fetched automatic location identification (ALI).

"With Amcom Software and 3Com's integrated solution, Granite County residents can be assured that a state-of-the-art call center is available to receive the respond to their emergency call as quickly and accurately as possible," said Stephen Immenschuh, sheriff of Granite County.