NDACo Proposing Simplified 911 Fee Process

Posted 9/22/23 (Fri)

NDACo Proposing Simplified 9-1-1 Fee Process

Jeff Eslinger | County News Editor

Did you know that every month, every telecommunications carrier in North Dakota collects a 9-1-1 fee, then sends a payment to every county their customers live in? There are dozens of telecommunications providers, some of which cover the whole state and some cover only a few counties. That’s a lot of payments for both the carrier and the county.

Then, each county sends payments to the 9-1-1 centers, Statewide Interoperable Radio Network (SIRN) and the Statewide Next Generation 9-1-1 Program (NG9-1-1).

There’s got to be a simpler way!

NDACo thinks there is. Over the coming months, we’ll be visiting with counties about a process we are proposing where the telecommunications providers would send us ONE check, saving them a lot of processing. We would then send ONE payment to each county for all the 9-1-1 fees collected on their behalf, as well as sending payments to the NG9-1-1 system and SIRN.

This only works if we have a very high participation rate – preferably 100 percent – of counties.

See the graphic on page 7 for an easy, at-a-glance version of how simple it can be.

This program is summarized nicely on this PDF: Surcharge_fee_proposal.pdf