Don’t be surprised when you see a slight hike in your monthly Alaska Power & Telephone bill.
Haines AP&T customers will incur an extra $1.51 on their statements to help pay for the Haines Borough Police Department’s enhanced 911 system.
The borough assembly approved an ordinance in June 2015 to apply the fee.
The borough’s dispatch center has been using the E-911 system since last year, but it is only in the first phase, said dispatch supervisor Celeste Grimes. This means dispatchers only see basic caller ID when they receive a 911 call, including a phone number and sometimes the subscriber’s name. They do not receive exact coordinates or a physical address to identify a caller’s location, which will be handled in the second phase.
Grimes said she doesn’t know when those upgrades will happen. Another cell tower needs to be installed within the borough to triangulate coordinates, she said. For the physical addresses, the borough needs to purchase an Automatic Location Identification card and subscribe to an addressing system.
“With not having the location, we rely on the information that the caller provides us with and any prior history we may have with that telephone number,” Grimes said. “The surcharge would get us closer to becoming Phase II and will also cover our equipment maintenance contract and equipment replacement when that time comes.”
Grimes said the process to implement the surcharge began in May, when certified letters were sent to different telephone companies that the Federal Communications Commission identified as holding a communications license within the Haines Borough. The fee will finally be applied to landlines and cell phones this month.
Letters from police chief Heath Scott notifying AP&T customers of the change were mailed out in late October. The letter said: “Your state and local legislators enacted this fee to help keep citizens safe, to find you and bring help more quickly and more efficiently.”
Grimes said there have been complaints of dropped 911 calls on cruise ship days, but this is on account of AP&T service being bogged down, not the E-911 system.