Peterborough Police Service Utilized New Technology During Province-Wide 9-1-1 Outage

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Peterborough Police Service 9-1-1 Communicators continued to assist residents calling 9-1-1 on their cellular devices despite the province-wide outage in the early morning hours of Thursday.

Photo by David Tuan Bui.

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

During Thursday’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 due to inoperable phone lines, 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,” said Stuart Betts, Peterborough Police Chief. “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 a.m. and 5 a.m. 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.”

The Peterborough Police Service is 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.

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