Despite Canada’s decision earlier this year to delay the deadlines for the transition to NG9-1-1 for Canadian public safety answering points (PSAPs), the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) still wants PSAPs to start the migration process early. Vice President of Business Development Nancy MacDonald explains why PSAPs are best served starting sooner rather than later.
New Deadlines Move Full Compliance to 2025In July, the CRTC announced that the deadlines for Canada’s PSAPs to move to NG9-1-1 voice and text systems were getting pushed out. The deadline for telecom service providers to send all 9-1-1 calls to one of the three Emergency Services IP Networks (ESInets) and the Next-Generation Core Services (NGCS) networks was moved to March 1, 2022. Following that, those PSAPs who have NG9-1-1-capable systems will be able to participate in the onboarding. If they aren’t there just yet, they can at that point schedule their onboarding with the carrier and their call-handling vendor. The soft launch of real-time text (RTT) services is to start May 29, 2024, and the deadline for PSAPs to be migrated to full NG9-1-1 is March 4, 2025.
With the deadlines pushed out, PSAPs have three years to transition to NG9-1-1. But they should start laying the groundwork immediately.