Authorities say 911 service has been fully restored in Plano, Rowlett, Garland and Wylie. Previous issues late Sunday into Monday afternoon meant some people calling from a cell phone had to use non-emergency numbers to get through.
Plano dispatchers spent most of early Monday fielding calls. Some came from curious residents wondering what was going on, while others were for actual emergencies.
"Pretty much every call that's coming in, we're treating it as if it could be an emergency," said Susan Rodriguez, a 911 public information specialist for the city of Plano.
Rodriguez said calls were making it through, but many took an extra step.
T-Mobile helped to reroute its cell phone customers into dispatch if they called 911 directly.
Plano, along with Rowlett, Wylie and Garland, had been urging callers to use non-emergency numbers while technicians worked to resolve the issues.
All four affected cities share a common thread: Frontier Communications.
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Frontier owns trunk lines and cables that connect cell phone companies to emergency call centers.
Plano officials believe something went wrong with a Frontier cable that T-Mobile uses. Outages were never the issue.
"The problem isn't with the 911 system — it's with the technology that accesses the 911 system," Rodriguez said.
Earlier Monday, Frontier told NBC 5 it was working with T-Mobile and cell phone provider Level 3 to pinpoint the root cause, which has still not been confirmed.
Wylie Fire Chief Brent Parker said his city noticed the problem Monday morning after testing emergency equipment. Parker said calls were bypassing Wylie and going straight to Collin County. He wasn't sure which service providers were impacted there, but he was pretty confident the problems originated with Frontier.
Parker said fortunately, he doesn't know of anyone significantly affected.
Rodriguez said it's a good idea to be prepared in case something like this happens again.
"I encourage everybody to have that non-emergency number programmed into their phone so that should something happen, it's already there and you're not having to look that number up," she said.
Dallas has had its own problems with 911 communications, including early this year. The city has contended with staffing shortages and technological problems that have resulted at times in hundreds of callers being placed on hold. NBC 5 has been able to confirm several 911 call-takers were hired in recent months, 36 to be exact since April 1.
