Essex County 911 issues ease [The Press-Republican, Plattsburgh, N.Y.]

(Press-Republican (Plattsburgh, NY) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Jan. 11--ELIZABETHTOWN -- Problems with 911 calls from Time Warner Cable Digital Phone subscribers are easing, according to Essex County emergency officials.

County Enhanced-911 Coordinator Michael Blaise said Monday that the main problem -- in which street numbers didn't display at the 911 center -- has been corrected.

He said the issues began in December when Time Warner switched its 911 database vendor from Sprint to Intrado.

"During the process, the database got corrupted somehow. We no longer received the house number with Time Warner 911 calls. Time Warner corrected the problem last week." Time Warner Cable Digital Phone is an Internet-based telephone service that uses the company's broadband network to route phone calls.

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Blaise said that although addresses now display correctly on their equipment at the dispatch center, the emergency-service number that shows which police agency, fire department and so on to send is not being transmitted for some calls.

"There's still an issue with ESN numbers. Those numbers tell the dispatcher which EMS agency to send to the problem." Blaise said the dispatcher has to manually determine what agencies to send.

"Right now, we're able to figure out which agencies to dispatch, but it might take a few seconds longer." Blaise said they're having daily conference calls with Time Warner to work out the problems.

"They told me (it would be fixed) as soon as possible." He said the problem affects Time Warner Digital Phone subscribers in the northern part of Essex County now, because that database was switched over by the company's Syracuse office.

Subscribers in the southern section of the county are with the Time Warner Albany office, which will transfer that database next week.

"We hope that goes smoothly," County Emergency Services Director Donald Jaquish said. "We won't know until it happens." He said any delay in receiving or dispatching a 911 call could potentially have catastrophic results.

The problems only affect Time Warner Digital Phone customers.

E-mail Lohr McKinstry at: lmckinstry@pressrepublican.com To see more of The Press-Republican or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.pressrepublican.com/.

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