County Looking to Internet Phones for 911 Funding

The county has been trying to contact various providers,including those that provide voiceover Internet protocoltechnology, or VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), which is used by an increasing number ofresidences and businesses for telephone service.

"This is our only revenue source and we need to protect it thebest we can," Zagarri said, "nevertheless I don't think it is a big revenueopportunity now."

Those VoIP calls coming into the county's 911 dispatching centeralso need to be properly tracked so that dispatchers can provideemergency responders with accurate information on where calls arebeing placed from, he said.

"There are a lot of small network integrators that can providepeople with phone service for $10 a month or so," Zagarrisaid.

Zagarri said the county is working with T-Mobile to integratePhase 2 research currently and is in the review process withVerizon and U.S. Cellular.

He said earlier the reason other companies didn't have thetechnology available to their clients is because there are fewerin the county and the county hadn't pinpointed the reasoning behindthe lack of tracking until recently.