Wow, In my town the telephone company does all the E911 work.
DO you have a city owned telephone company?? I know some smaller mid-west town still have some of them, and a few coops..
Big city, big network...sure the private citizen phones into 911 over a phone line (could be cell phone, could be land line), but then within the city the network communications takes over, the info goes into the city’s network, and the work goes on from there, as in dispatches of emergency vehicles, communication between departments, etc.
In the days since 9/11 the intracity communications have really come under the microscope. If you’ll remember back on September 11, one of the major problems was inter departmental communications. The police couldn’t talk to the fire, the fire to the port authorities, etc. So Homeland Security has asked major cities to really ramp up their networks to prevent the confusion and chaos that might be experienced during a terrorist attack. Even in our EOC there’s a need to go beyond normal communication channels, i.e. computers in police cars, radio communications, sat phones, etc.