If you’ve ever assumed texting 911 is always an option in an emergency, mark your calendar — for about four weeks starting Aug. 5, it won’t be.
Boone County Joint Communications announced this week that text-to-911 service will be temporarily unavailable while the county upgrades to a Next Generation 911 system, an internet-based Emergency Services IP Network meant to make emergency communications more reliable and resilient than the current setup. The interruption runs from Aug. 5 through an expected restoration around Sept. 1, according to Christie Davis, director of Boone County Joint Communications, who issued the announcement.
Anyone who tries to text 911 during that window will get an automatic reply — “Text-to-911 is temporarily unavailable” — directing them to call instead, per the county’s announcement.
Here’s the part that matters most: voice calls to 911 are not affected by this upgrade. If you have a genuine emergency during the interruption, call — don’t text.
Text-to-911 exists mainly as a backup for people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or in a situation where speaking isn’t safe. If that’s you or someone in your household, it’s worth knowing now, before an emergency happens, that the usual text option won’t work between Aug. 5 and roughly Sept. 1 — and planning for that ahead of time, whether that’s a relay service, a trusted neighbor who can call on your behalf, or simply knowing a quiet call is still possible when a text isn’t.
Why go through the disruption at all? Next Generation 911 routes calls and texts over internet-based networks instead of the county’s older analog lines, which is supposed to make the system more resilient to outages and more accurate at routing calls to the right dispatchers — something that matters in our rural stretches where cell coverage is already inconsistent. The tradeoff is this maintenance window while the new network comes online.
The short version: mark Aug. 5 to about Sept. 1 on your calendar, tell anyone in your household who might rely on text-to-911, and remember that a phone call still gets through the whole time.
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