Overview

When the department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resource went to find a telecom provider to run Ireland’s Emergency Call Answering Service (ECAS) in 2016, a two year process began that resulted in BT Ireland winning a contract they have held since 2010 for a further five years. Providing the Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), BT operators direct 112/999 calls to the appropriate emergency service – An Garda Siochána, Fire Service, Ambulance Service, or Coast Guard.

The challenge

Although we had been running ECAS in Ireland, the department raised the bar on what was needed. Improving on our current service was the biggest challenge to achieve the resilience needed, with pressure on the successful bidder to build out a service with 24/7, 365 days a year availability and almost zero downtime. With around 6,000 calls a day, and 2.3 million call a year, the challenge was having the latest technology for identifying the location of the caller in need of help. Combining the most efficient systems for directing calls to the appropriate emergency service.

The solution

We committed to a multi-million euro investment as part of an all-encompassing service covering technology, buildings, a dedicated team of 80 backroom staff and highly trained call takers who would be directly employed by BT.

The result

Northern Europe is recognised as having the most sophisticated ECAS systems in the world - and Ireland is among the very best. Our service was already answering calls in less than 1.3 seconds, which has since been cut to 0.7 seconds, meaning more lifesaving calls can be made in a single day. Combining high-speed telecoms with very large databases has significantly improved our caller location capabilities. As operators take a call, the system is automatically matching Eircodes, base stations, STD codes and phone numbers in the background.