At AT&T, we have long been committed to serving the public safety community – we see it as both our obligation and our honor. This is especially important in times of crisis and natural disasters. While the AT&T Network Disaster Recovery (NDR) team worked on network restoration in areas impacted by storm damage, federal, state, and local authorities assisted our on-the-ground teams by “helping clear the way” as we deployed dedicated assets from the FirstNet^®, Built with AT&T fleet to provide vital connectivity in the most heavily affected areas. Additionally, the FirstNet Response Operations Group (ROG)™ – led by a team of former first responders dedicated to working around the clock, 24x7x365, to support public safety’s emergency communications needs – had liaisons engaged with local, state and federal agencies.

With the unprecedented destruction caused by Hurricane Helene, North Carolina’s Next Generation 911 network continued to work and allowed people to make critical emergency calls. Utilizing AT&T ESInet™, North Carolina’s Next Generation 911 network allows for the secure routing of digital information—including landline calls, cell phone calls and text messages—to the appropriate public safety answering point (PSAP) based on geographic location. It also provides high-speed data network connections that allow every PSAP to serve as a backup for others on the system in the event of a natural disaster or an overload of emergency calls. This provided resiliency in the wake of Hurricane Helene, and ultimately helped save lives.

Learn more about the resiliency of North Carolina’s Next Gen 911 network: https://statescoop.com/north-carolina-next-generation-911-hurricane-helene/