911 Outages: How ECCs Remain Connected to their Communities When Voice Systems are Down
Introduction
Emergencies don’t stop just because there’s a 911 outage. When a natural disaster, technical issue, or human error impacts network service, calls to Emergency Communications Centers often spike significantly.
Some callers are in life-threatening situations, but many others are just nervous about the outage and want to test out whether they can reach 911. Unable to connect, they typically make numerous redials across different devices, adding to the overall volume. Meanwhile, bad connectivity shortens the duration of calls, which limits the information telecommunicators can get about the situation.
Without a reliable, scalable, AI-supported back-up system in place, telecommunicators struggle to navigate the safety gaps in 911 outages to prioritize ongoing emergencies and deliver the right resources to the right place, without delay.
What’s in a reliable backup?
RapidSOS UNITE operates on its own data channel. Even during outages, ECCs can still get essential information to help those who need emergency assistance. For example, when voice lines are down, telecommunicators can still access the caller’s phone number and location. Then, they can follow up via administrative lines, cellular devices, or outbound text messages.
With UNITE, ECCs can also send information to first responders in the field during network disruptions. Enhanced location intelligence, along with actionable information from medical profiles, telematics, sensor alerts, and other non-voice data, help public safety professionals move with precision and speed. And HARMONY AI, our intelligent co-pilot, lets telecommunicators quickly analyze trends, identify hotspots, and derive insights to support more proactive incident management.
To understand the scope of impact of 911 outages and how RapidSOS helps, we analyzed emergency call volumes and ECC response measures from several of the recent, high-profile outages in Pennsylvania, Nebraska, South Dakota, and other states.
Data Collection
The analysis’s dataset comprises anonymized 911 calls from ECCs during high-profile outages, including: Pennsylvania (2025), Nebraska (2023), Nebraska, South Dakota, Nevada and Texas (2024), and Connecticut (2024). The data for each call includes timestamps, geographic information, and other additional information (e.g., demographic, health, medical, telematics, etc.).
Methodology
We calculated descriptive statistics on the frequency of call times, types, and geographic variations. Datasets were normalized per 100,000 inhabitants to ensure privacy and help identify trends and correlations.
Pennsylvania: July 11, 2025
- Duration: ~10 hours
- Cause: A defect in core digital software
- Impact: Residents were advised to contact their local 911 centers using 10-digit non-emergency phone numbers, and statewide Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) were issued.
- Call increase: 766%
- Response: RapidSOS UNITE remained fully operational throughout the entire event, giving operators the information they needed to call people back on non-emergency lines. And UNITE could receive location payloads so ECCs could see call plots in the queue and on the map.
Nebraska: August 31 - Sept. 1, 2023
- Duration: ~8 hours
- Cause: Botched repair to underground cable
- Impact: Some dispatch centers couldn’t receive any 911 calls, while others had sporadic services.
- Call increase: 1,478%
- Response: Supported by RapidSOS UNITE, 911 telecommunicators in some areas of the state were able to automatically obtain callers’ contact information and use their personal cell phone devices to reach them.
Nebraska, South Dakota, Nevada and Texas: April 17-18, 2024
- Duration: Less than 3 hours
- Cause: Botched installation of a light pole
- Impact: Residents across multiple states were unable to reach 911 for several hours with voice calls.
- Call increase: As much as a 416% increase in South Dakota
- Response: Texts to 911, along with RapidSOS, were both fully-functional during the outage.
Single carrier outage: Feb. 22, 2024
- Duration: Early morning to late afternoon
- Cause: outage
- Impact: ECCs could receive calls, but the outage affected citizen’s ability to reach 911
- Call Increase: 62% rise
- Response: With RapidSOS, 911 telecommunicators could get the basic information they need to return calls, even if they got disconnected
Y: Percentage over baseline
X: Time of day (Feb. 21 - Feb. 22, 2024)
Connecticut outage: Oct. 23, 2024
- Duration: Under three hours
- Cause: Equipment failure
- Impact: 911 calls from landlines and Verizon phones weren’t going through
- Call increase: 12,562% increase
- Response: RapidSOS provided critical data to ECCs, acting as a backup system when traditional 911 services failed. This ensured that ECCs knew who was trying to reach out and could respond appropriately despite the outage.
What happens when 911 goes down?
- When local emergency services aren’t available, people panic. Often, lines are flooded immediately after the outage, with call volumes surging over 1,000% in some cases.
- Outages can be brief or last for hours, with significant fluctuations in volumes usually occurring until the situation is resolved. The need to manage both immediate spikes and sustained pressure reinforces the critical importance of having a resilient, scalable system in place.
- Amid unexpected surges, ECCs need a reliable backup system that gets necessary information in the hands of telecommunicators so they’re able to use non-emergency lines and other mechanisms to coordinate responses.
- During an outage, RapidSOS UNITE can deliver precise location details and, when possible, preliminary medical information and other insights. UNITE also provides telecommunicators with redial numbers so they can reach their communities even when 911 voice lines are down.
How does RapidSOS help?
In each of these outages, ECCs across the country that could not communicate through traditional phone calls could still get the information they needed to reach callers and dispatch emergency services. They serve as stark reminders of the importance of digitally-resiliency in 911 centers today.
In outages, RapidSOS UNITE automatically provides telecommunicators with the incoming caller data they need to follow up, along with precise location details, and potentially even preliminary medical information. And with information like redial numbers readily available, telecommunicators still have a way to communicate with the community and respond to emergencies even when voice lines are down or unreliable.
Check out our solutions page to learn more about how RapidSOS can help your ECC be ready when unexpected service outages strike.