TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Netagen (formerly Combat Networks) announced today that it was awarded a Next Generation 911 (“NG9-1-1”) solutions and services contract to provide its NG9-1-1 call handling solution to the Toronto Fire Service, supporting one of the most active 9-1-1 call centers in Canada. Toronto Fire becomes the most recent Public Safety Agency to join the Netagen growing family of PSAP clients in Canada.
“We are very excited to be partnering with the City of Toronto and Toronto Fire who is one of the most visionary and active Public Safety agencies in Canada to support their effort in bringing next generation call handling capabilities to their communities,” Christopher Emery, Netagen CEO, said.
By adding the Toronto Fire Service, Netagen now supports a true “trifecta” in Ontario, supporting the largest police department (Ontario Provincial Police), the largest ambulance dispatcher (Ministry of Health) and the largest fire department (Toronto Fire Service).
“Netagen has an unmatched wealth of knowledge and experience that will definitely benefit Toronto Fire Services and by extension, the community we serve. We look forward to a successful partnership.” – Frank Pappone, Division Chief, Technology, Toronto Fire
The Netagen NG9-1-1 solution has been specifically created for Canadian PSAPs and will be deployed in a fully redundant design to provide >99.999% uptime and services to Toronto Fire Service’s 40 agent console positions.
The solution leverages “Best Service Routing” technology that allows Toronto Fire Service to leverage resources at either of their PSAP locations as one large pool of call takers. This feature will be particularly useful during times of higher call volumes where more flexibility is required.
Netagen’s solution and architecture has been thoroughly tested as part of the NG9-1-1 carrier trials and has successfully completed more carrier tests than any other technology solution in Canada.
The CHFE solution to be deployed at TFS is based on “Open Standards” and offers the most robust and resilient telephony platform available on the market today. This architecture provides the reliability and redundancy required for a Public Safety environment. Its unique “Stateful Replication” capabilities provide 911 Agencies with the peace of mind that even in the unlikely possibility of a component failure, there will be zero impact to operators with the capability of exceeding 99.999% of uptime and is the only solution that can meet this level of reliability when lives are at stake.
The 9-1-1 multi-media Agent Desktop Softphone components of the solution are based on NENAi3 standards and have been developed in Canada specifically for Canadian PSAPs and the Canadian ESInet services being implemented in Canada. The architecture has been designed to support future ESInet features such as RTT and video, but also has the flexibility to continue to adapt and grow as new technologies are introduced in Canada. The sites will be equipped with multimedia SIT911i3 NG9-1-1, extremely powerful next generation 911 call taking positions designed to maximize the effectiveness of call taking. The intuitive user interface allows Call Takers to quickly assess, prioritize and handle landline, wireless and VoIP calls. Call Takers can quickly create conferences, transfer calls, determine the location of callers and play back recently recorded conversations. The SIT911i3 is also engineered to be future proof so that next generation capabilities such as Real Time Text (“RTT”), or exchanging video, images and data with specially trained staff, can be supported once they become standardized and available to the Canadian public. In addition, the system is designed according to the industry and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication (“CRTC”) Next Generation 911 directives.
“We are very excited to be partnering with the City of Toronto and Toronto Fire who is one of the most visionary and active Public Safety agencies in Canada to support their effort in bringing next generation call handling capabilities to their communities,” said Christopher Emery, Chief Executive Officer of Netagen. “Toronto’s highly available deployment will provide the capabilities to align with evolving technologies supported by NG9-1-1 networks, such as RTT, picture and video sharing functionality and delivering more precise caller location information to the telecommunicators and first responders.”
About Netagen
Since July 2001, Netagen has assisted its customers by designing and architecting state of the art high-performance networks. We have been installing, and training supported vendor solutions as well as maintaining, monitoring (NOC), and troubleshooting as required. Headquartered in Ottawa and with offices across Canada, we serve many of the country’s largest Federal and Provincial Government Departments, Healthcare, Police Force, Municipalities and Fortune 1000 companies. Our corporate mission is to be recognized by our customers as the most knowledgeable, most responsive, and most valuable external resource for network infrastructures where security, performance, and reliability are vital requirements. Everyone at Netagen is focused and dedicated to your success by providing a complete lifecycle solution from network planning and project management through to post-sales support and network transition services. Netagen has the people, skills, and products to work for you at all stages of the network infrastructure lifecycle. Visit us at www.netagen.com
