It’s going to take a lot more than new regulations to allow all Canadians to send urgent, life-and-death text and video messages to emergency call centres, say advocates of so-called next-generation 911 services.

Organizations, including the Canadian Interoperability Technology Interest Group, say a hearing this week by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission into expanding 911 service across the country is just the beginning of what’s needed to upgrade services to take advantage of new technologies.

Police services will need to train their 911 operators to deal with an influx of text messages and the potentially disturbing pictures and videos likely to be relayed by witnesses and victims alike, says CITIC executive director Eric Torunski.

(via Next-generation 911: CRTC braces for emergency video and texting - The Globe and Mail)