The chair of the New York City Council's public safety committee says he’ll propose legislation to improve how officials respond to 911 outages after an hourslong technological glitch in August left hundreds of callers unable to speak with dispatchers.
The outage came after years of delays to a promised upgrade of the city's 911 system. Councilmember Oswald Feliz, the committee chair, said the 911 outage highlighted glaring issues in the city’s emergency communications system.
“ Our 911 call system is vulnerable, and it needs a lot of work to make sure that it's safe and reliable,” he said in an interview.
New York City’s Chief Technology Officer Lisa Gelobter testified at a City Council hearing earlier this month that a routine software upgrade at the Bronx call center disrupted about 1,700 emergency calls in mid-August. While many of the calls came from alarm companies, more than 700 were placed by New Yorkers who called 911 for help, she said. About 100 of those callers never connected to an operator.
Gelobter said it took hours for officials to understand the scope of the outage, and to reroute the calls to another call center in Brooklyn. The city did not notify the public about the issue, she said.
Feliz said he’s not expecting an end to all outages of the 911 system, given that they’ve happened multiple times in New York and other cities across the country. But he said the city should have better procedures in place to let the public know when an outage happens. He said he’s drafting legislation that would require just that.
“ If there's an outage on one of our most important systems, the bare minimum that we should be doing is providing the public with notice about it,” he said. “We should not be keeping something like that a secret. We should not be trying to sweep it under the rug.”
Feliz said he’s also considering legislation that would require officials to improve how they detect outages and ensure that backup systems work properly when needed. But Feliz said the city shouldn’t wait for new laws to be passed before taking action.
“ This is clearly a huge issue that they should be concerned about and that they should be taking every step to resolve,” he said.
The mayor’s office said the city is committed to completing a thorough investigation into the outage, understanding what happened and making sure its systems are reliable.
At the City Council hearing, Gelobter said officials decided not to notify the public because they were focused on resolving the outage quickly and didn’t want to deter people from calling 911. She also said the city is taking steps to prevent a similar situation in the future, including reviewing 911 call recordings to monitor possible issues and taking more precautions during technology upgrades.
Years of Next Gen 911 delays
The outage happened more than a decade after New York City started planning an overhaul of the technology for its emergency communications system. The new system, Next Gen 911, will be digital, rather than analogue. It will allow dispatchers to receive photos and videos, not just phone calls or short text messages. Next Gen 911 will also identify where calls are coming from with more accuracy, according to a recent city report.
The upgrade to Next Gen 911 had cost the city more than $240 million as of August 2026, City Hall said. It was initially expected to be done by summer 2021, according to a request for proposals then-Mayor Bill de Blasio released in 2017. In 2022, then-Mayor Eric Adams’ administration announced a new expected completion date of late 2024. An annual progress report last year pushed the expected launch date back again, to summer 2026. And at this month’s City Council hearing, Gelobter said the upgrade to Next Gen 911 was expected to be completed in 2027.
“I inherited this program that the last administration did not prioritize,” she said. “But that’s going to change under my watch.”
Gelobter said it’s not unusual for a complicated system like this to encounter unexpected challenges, and that the upgrades are happening in phases so the old system can keep operating without interruptions in the meantime. But she said she needs to “really take a closer look” to understand the schedule and ensure that it’s rolled out in a way that is “safe and secure.”
Rebecca Neusteter, executive director of the University of Chicago Health Lab and author of a new book about 911 systems, said networks across the country are suffering from outdated technology and a lack of investment. She said New York City is not the only place that has struggled to implement Next Gen 911.
“ 911 is core civic infrastructure, and people rely on it in the worst possible moments of their lives,” she said. “They expect it to work, and it often doesn't. But unfortunately, people don't pay very close attention to it until they actually need it to work, and so then they find it to be very surprising when it doesn't.
Neusteter, who has studied the 911 system for years, said upgrading the technology will make it better for people who need help, and for the people who are answering and responding to their calls.
“ This issue is very much remediable,” she said. “The problem is that it takes money and dedicated attention from policymakers, budget officers, and other practitioners.
Feliz said it’s reasonable for officials to work slowly enough that the upgrades are done properly, without any interruptions to service.
“ But taking seven or more years to update a system like this, I don't see any reasonable explanation for that,” he said. “No system should take almost a decade to upgrade, especially something related to technology.”
