Dickinson County, KS is located within the central eastern part of Kansas, with its county seat in Abilene. The PSAP there dispatches for a population of approximately 26,000 individuals and covers a territory of 950 square miles. Recently, Dickinson County upgraded their communications equipment to Positron's Life Line 100 and Power 911 IWS, complete with Norstar PBX integration.

Dickinson County's PSAP processes a combination of wireline and wireless calls about a 50/50 split. Because it is a rural community, the largest population center consists of approximately 8000 individuals. About 1 in 5 of their calls comes from outside of the county population, from individuals just passing through the area. They process a large number of fire calls, due to lightning strikes in the farmland areas to controlled burns that have gotten out of control. For this reason, a reliable and robust solution was required, and Dickinson County selected Positron's equipment.

Sherry Massey of Dickinson County was pleased with the configurability of the solution. "We were impressed with Positron's system's ability to be configured to support our specific call-handling needs," she says. "We chose the Positron system for this reason as well as the Norstar features it supports. No other vendor seemed to be able to do what we saw the Positron system do." For example, Dickinson County makes good use of the barge-in capability provided by the Positron solution.

The PSAP today supports 2 call-handling positions, both equipped with Power 911, Positron's computer-based call-handling application. It is an integrated Intelligent Workstation that provides call takers with on-screen control of both landline and wireless calls in a wide variety of telephony environments. Through an intelligent approach to information display and management, Power 911 enhances emergency call handling efficiency and consistency.

Sherry Massey had high praise for the smoothness of the installation of the new system. "It was fantastic," she says, "We were really impressed with the overall installation of the system. Any issues were addressed quickly and resolved equally rapidly." She goes on to say that the one call that was made for support following the installation was handled quickly by Positron's support staff. "It was something we wanted configured that we hadn't identified initially - with a call to the Positron staff it was resolved."

The Dickinson County call-handlers had little trouble becoming familiar with the Power 911 GUI, and after their training lead by Positron personnel, were comfortably processing emergency calls. "The transition to the Positron system has gone very well for our call-handlers," says Ms Massey. "All in all, the installation has been a very positive experience."

Positron is proud to welcome Dickinson County to the family.