Changing landscape – wirelines to wireless.

The number of wireline (landline) telephones is declining as more people migrate from wireline to wireless services.

This declining number means reduced revenue collected by local governments to support PSAPs* in British Columbia. It also means that more and more calls to 911 are generated from cell phones – in fact 67% of 911 calls are from cell phones.

*A public-safety answering point (PSAP), sometimes called “public-safety access point”, is a call center responsible for answering calls to an emergency telephone number for police, firefighting, an ambulance services. Trained telephone operators are also usually responsible for dispatching these emergency services. Most PSAPs are now capable of caller location for landline calls, and many can handle mobile phone locations as well.