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Problem With Rogers 911 System Fixed

ROGERS (KFSM) — 911 phone lines went down on Thursday (May 4) in Rogers, but dispatchers said no calls were left unanswered. At about 7 a.m. the 911 syste...

ROGERS (KFSM) -- 911 phone lines went down on Thursday (May 4) in Rogers, but dispatchers said no calls were left unanswered.

At about 7 a.m. the 911 system in Rogers quit working.

“Any calls that we would’ve gotten for 911, nothing was dropped, nothing is missed because the system automatically reroutes it to Bentonville,” Foster said.

Rogers Police public information officer Keith Foster said Benton County has several PSAPS or public safety answering points.

“Even if one PSAPS goes down there is always coverage in the system, so there is redundancy built into the system,” he said.

Department communications coordinator Vicki Atchley said the problem occurred because of a hardware failure in one of the boards.

“AT&T got on it immediately. I called them, of course they already knew about it but I called them to make sure that our tech was in route. He was here and had it up and running in a couple of hours. We’ve got all of our calls back,” Atchley said.

Foster said this scenario is a reminder that it’s always important to let the dispatcher know your location when you call 911.

“One of the first questions they ask is what’s your emergency but also where are you at because honestly the way technology works, I mean we’ve answered calls from other states before,” he said.

There was a similar issue with AT&T wireless customers not being able to dial 911 throughout Northwest Arkansas and several other states in March. AT&T was able to get that issue resolved within a couple of hours.

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