New Technology to the Peterborough Police Service Helps During Province-Wide 9-1-1 Outage

Peterborough Police Service 9-1-1 Communicators were able to continue to assist residents calling into 9-1-1 on their cellular devices despite the province-wide outage in the early morning hours of Thursday, September 17, 2026.

The 9-1-1 Communications Team on shift was testing a technology called Rapid SOS which assists a 9-1-1 Operator by providing computer generated information such as the phone number and location of the caller.  The technology allows the information to be transmitted independent of the 9-1-1 lines. 

During last night’s outage, the 9-1-1 team was able to receive the phone number of 9-1-1 callers and while Operators were unable to answer the calls (because the phone lines were inoperable), they were able to immediately call the number back to inquire about the nature of the emergency call and relay information to the appropriate first responder if required. Fortunately, during the outage only one call was received.

“Although we had no way of knowing the 9-1-1 lines would be unavailable across the province, our work to mitigate against such risk by ensuring ongoing connectivity for emergency calls ensured we were able to respond as our community would expect us to. It is highly unusual and rare that 9-1-1 lines are unavailable, and it was fortunate that the shift of Operators who have been testing this technology happened to be working when it did happen. We are not yet aware of the reason for the outage, but we were impacted between 4:00am and 5:00am on Thursday, September 17, 2026. It should provide some comfort to residents to know that even during an outage their call will be seen and Operators can still assist.” – Stuart Betts, Chief, Peterborough Police Service.

The Peterborough Police Service is in the process of rolling out this functionality across all 9-1-1 teams. “Essentially, last night was the ultimate proof of concept, that supports a full deployment of the technology as even one missed 9-1-1 call would be too many.” said Chief Betts.

We thank residents for their patience during the outage. 

Sandra Dueck
Manager, Strategic Communication Services
Peterborough Police Service
876@peterboroughpolice.ca
705-876-1122 x217