Joe Hainthaler, Intelligencer Journal/New Era (Lancaster, Pennsylvania)

You might have heard that Verizon Wireless customers will, beginning at 10 a.m. today, be able to send text messages to 9-1-1 in an emergency.

So how about those signed up with other cellphone providers? Why are they being left out?

They’re not, according to Timothy Baldwin, deputy director of Lancaster County-Wide Communications, which runs the county’s 9-1-1 center.

Four major cellphone companies – AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon – promised the federal government that they would make text-to-9-1-1 available to 9-1-1 centers capable of receiving them by May 2014.

Lancaster County then reached out first to AT&T and Verizon and will soon reach out to Sprint and T-Mobile. The county’s letter asks that Lancaster County be considered as a place to make text-to-9-1-1 service available early.

Verizon responded that it would do so by today. And AT&T said it would do so by late winter, Baldwin said.

The Federal Communications Commission wants to require that cellphone companies make the service available to 9-1-1 centers nationwide by May 2014. The rule, proposed in December 2012, aims to carry out part of the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act passed by Congress in 2010.

Only one Pennsylvania county offered text-to-9-1-1 before Lancaster.

Dauphin County, home of Harrisburg, started accepting Verizon text messages to its 9-1-1 center on Oct. 3, said Amy Richards Harinath, spokeswoman for the Dauphin County Board of Commissioners. It had, as of Tuesday afternoon, received one.

To avoid confusion, the FCC has required that cellphone companies let customers know when text-to-9-1-1 service is not available. As of Sept. 30, all cellphone companies were to have set up a bounce-back message letting a customer who tries know that text-to-9-1-1 is not available in his or her area.

Baldwin said he will stress a vital point during his presentation this morning: “Don’t test it.”

Texts take more time to read and relay than a telephone call to 9-1-1, and wasting a 9-1-1 center staff’s time responding to tests of the system might slow a response to someone urgently in need of help, he said.

Text-to-9-1-1 is meant only for certain circumstances. They are:

• When calling 9-1-1 is not possible, such as if the caller is deaf or speech-impaired and cannot access TTY service.

• If a caller is otherwise unable to speak.

• If speaking would be unsafe, as in the case of abduction or home invasion.

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