VIDEO: Ontario’s first next-generation 911 tech launches in Mississauga and Brampton

Mississauga and Brampton residents are the first in Ontario to benefit from next-generation 911 technology – an upgrade police say will more quickly connect residents in crisis to first responders.

Peel Regional Police say its new next-generation 911 (NG911) system went live at 3 a.m. on Wednesday, completing a years-long project to modernize Peel’s 911 system.

With the Brampton call centre receiving more than 1 million calls for service every year, police say the 911 upgrade will make it quicker to connect with first responders and help “towards significantly decreasing wait times in emergency situations.”

“The transition to NG911 services is a Halley’s Comet-like (sic) moment for modernizing our response to emergencies and meeting the needs of our community when they need us the most,” PRP Dep. Chief Anthony Odoardi said in a statement.

The switch to NG911 comes as police are dealing with more negligent emergency calls including honest mistakes like a misdial to people complaining about their coffee orders or playing cricket in a park.

Some 40 per cent of all 911 calls received in Peel are for non-emergencies, creating what police have called a “bottleneck” of callers tying up resources, police say.

More than 50,000 calls to 911 that were not for legitimate emergencies occurred in October and November alone, leading Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown to push for fines for 911 misuse.

Police say the upgraded call system uses Motorola’s Vesta NG911 platform in partnership with Bell Canada, with funding coming from the Government of Ontario.

The launch of NG911 in Peel follows the announcement of a new state-of-the-art Operational Support Facility that will handle all fire, police and medical calls for Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon.

The approximately 200,000-square-foot facility will also be the home base for the PRP traffic and road safety team along with the police information technology, records and analytics bureaus among others when it opens its doors with an expected completion date in 2027.

Peel Regional Police Becomes the First Large 9-1-1 Communications Centre in Canada to Launch Next Generation 9-1-1

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— Peel Regional Police (@PeelPolice) February 22, 2024