Inside INdigital: When the phone doesn’t ring

Guest blog written by
Laken Detweiler - Social Media Specialist | INdigital

It’s a small center. You have your busy times and slow times, so when the phone doesn’t ring for a while, you’re not worried. Except for this time, it wasn’t ringing because your 911 lines were down. You don’t know how long they were down, just that they were. 

On Tuesday, February 23, at approximately 11:58 am, a police department in Knox County notified Knox County 911 that their 911 lines weren’t working. The supervisor on duty called Knox County’s 911 service provider and started a ticket. Rob McMullen, Executive Director at Knox County, decided to call INdgitial to see if we had an idea of what was going on. INdigital provides all of the wireless traffic for the state of Indiana through the state 911 network. 

During the call with our Network Service Operations Center (NSOC), McMullen learned that his backup MEVO phones were disabled, and all of the Knox County calls were being transferred to Daviess County. To get dispatchers back to receiving 911 calls in their own centers, the NSOC quickly enabled the phones, and after a few test calls, Knox’s MEVO phones were ringing by 12:03 pm. 

“This was all within two minutes after I made the call [to the NSOC],” said McMullen, “so then I checked to see if we could get our landline calls switched over [to MEVO], so he gave me a 1-800 number to call to give to [our service provider] so everything can come through our MEVO phones. They added the number and all of our 911 calls were back being answered within 4-5 minutes from when we were originally notified of the 911 outage.” 

McMullen said a technician from their service provider didn’t arrive on-site for approximately five hours. He continued that if it weren’t for knowing INdigital’s abilities and having MEVO, Daviess County would have had to answer their calls the whole time.

“If I wouldn’t have known what INdigital’s capabilities are and how they handle their network and everything else, it would’ve been 5 or 6 hours before calls were handled,” McMullen said. “But knowing INdigital’s expertise and how they handle things, knowing how they do things, and their knowledge of the 911 network, it was five minutes as opposed to five hours that our 911 lines were back being routed to our home PSAP instead of going to a neighboring agency.”

McMullen has known INdigital for almost 20 years, which is nearly his entire 911 career. 

“I’ve traveled this nation as NENA president, and there are very few companies that really care for 911. The number one company that gives a damn about 911 is INdigital,” said McMullen. “They care about their employees. They care about their customers. They take care of their customers. When somebody comes into the PSAP, one of the technicians, they thoroughly want to know what is going on, how to do things, and they don’t stop until things are actually done. A lot of times, you’ll get, ‘Well, I can’t figure it out. We will get it done later.’ INdigital, they don’t leave until things are accomplished and until it is done correctly. I’ve dealt with them in three different PSAPs and on lots of different projects, so I know how they do, and I thoroughly appreciate everything they do. They’re a rock-solid company.”

The star in this experience that turned a possible five-hour situation into a five-minute one is MEVO. MEVO is our backup and disaster recovery platform.

“If the routing is set up correctly and you have your MEVOs, your initial call that goes unanswered in your PSAP gets routed to the MEVOs immediately,” McMullen said. “If we would’ve known that our stuff was down and our MEVOs were enabled, the calls would have automatically come into the MEVO, and we would’ve been like, ‘Hey, what’s going on, why are we receiving calls into these instead of our Vesta system?’”

“The MEVO systems, whether it be the backup phones that are in dispatch or the crash kits, they are just amazing,” McMullen said. “I have a crash kit in my office, so if we ever need to run 911 somewhere else, we are set. On top of that, I have a MEVO system in our emergency operations center where we can switch 911 calls to that in the blink of an eye if we need to, and it’s just so easy to do that. You don’t have to flip a switch or do anything else, it’s a matter of just seconds before it gets done, and they’re so easy to work with.”

Our priority is to ensure that anyone dialing 911 receives the assistance they need. MEVO is just a piece of the puzzle.