LISBON — The new, updated Next Generation 911 system for Columbiana County went live last week and 911 Coordinator Brian Rutledge said it’s working out well.

“I’m just really pleased that it went as smooth as it did,” he said.

The Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) at Columbiana, East Palestine and East Liverpool police department’s migrated to the new system Feb. 26, while the PSAPs at Salem Police department, the county Sheriff’s Office and the backup location at the county Emergency Management Agency migrated on Feb. 27.

Rutledge, who also serves as deputy director of the EMA, said the days were long but they didn’t run into any issues during the migration, except for a few minor programming glitches they worked through.

He previously said both the state of Ohio and the vendor Comtech told county officials they wouldn’t be leaving February without the new NG 911 system operational and they made good on that promise.

The county was one of several pilot counties that previously went on the NG 911 system, but with plans to now take the system statewide, the county’s equipment and software needed to be updated. In January, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced Washington and Monroe counties as the first in the state to fully implement the new NG 911. According to Rutledge, the number of counties fully migrated stands at eight, with three more in the process out of 88 counties.

Besides Washington, Monroe and Columbiana counties, the other counties with the new system operational include Carroll, Harrison, Morgan, Union and Van Wert. Many of these counties were part of the pilot program.

“Next Generation 911 makes emergency services more efficient, especially in the rural areas of Ohio where it is critical to have strong and reliable communication infrastructure,” DeWine said in a previous press release.

According to the press release, “NG 911 technology provides citizens with advanced communication capabilities when calling for emergency services, such as text messaging. NG 911 technology also supports more efficient emergency management by reducing the number of call transfers between 911 call centers with more precise identification of the location of callers using cell phones.”

As one of the pilot programs, Columbiana County already had the text messaging capability for people to text 911. With the new system, he said dispatchers will have the ability to send a link to the callers to get photos or video from the scene of an incident, for the dispatcher to see what the caller is seeing.

The 40-plus dispatchers who answer 911 calls in the county had already been trained on the new system in January, then there was testing of the system. He noted that during the migration, no calls had to be rolled over to the Sheriff’s Office or were dropped. Everything worked out well and Rutledge said the state personnel and vendor personnel “were very pleased with how our migration went through.”

He said he’s receiving a lot of good feedback from the dispatchers, explaining there are some nice features they didn’t have before, such as being able to see all the 911 calls from all the PSAPs on their screen at once, including the locations for the calls. There’s a built-in messaging feature for dispatchers to share information.

He described the new system as user friendly, with each dispatcher having the ability to tweak their screen to the way they like it.

According to Rutledge, once the whole state is on the new NG 911 system, information can be shared quickly and easily between counties.

The state purchased $324,000 worth of equipment for the new system for Columbiana County, covering most of the cost for the upgrade. He previously estimated the county’s cost at just under $30,000 to purchase headsets and second monitors for each of the PSAPs and the backup location at the EMA.