CentralSquare Acquires Tellus: Creating A Single, Virtual 911 Network for Public Safety Agencies Nationwide

Virtually connecting 911 computer aided dispatch (CAD) systems enables the nearest first responder to reach an emergency up to two minutes faster, potentially allowing police, fire and EMS personnel to save 125,000 lives every year.

Lake Mary, FL, May 22, 2019 — CentralSquare, the leading provider of public safety and public administration software in North America, announced today that it has acquired Tellus Safety Solutions, LLC, the leader in connecting multiple computer aided dispatch (CAD) systems used by emergency responders. CentralSquare already works with over 5,000 public safety agencies. To accelerate the building of a single, virtual, nationwide 911 dispatch system, current CentralSquare clients will immediately get complimentary access to real-time situational awareness across jurisdictions – cutting emergency response time by up to 2 minutes per incident and potentially enabling first responders to save nearly 125,000 lives nationwide.

An estimated 240 million calls are made to 911 across America each year. At the end of each call is a citizen seeking immediate, life-saving help. However, the calls come in to over 8,900 different primary and secondary dispatch centers. These dispatch centers use multiple types of software systems, preventing dispatchers from easily identifying, deploying and coordinating emergency resources across jurisdictions. This results in longer responses to life-threatening emergencies. For example, a police vehicle from another jurisdiction may be closest to an active shooter and could have reached a scene before the tragedy escalated. It also leads to coordination challenges during natural disasters where dozens of police, fire and EMS services need to work collectively to prevent damage to life and property. For example, five agencies and 51 fire stations needed seamless coordination to respond to the recent wildfires in Southern California.

With this acquisition, CentralSquare is promoting “public safety without borders” by building a single, virtual 911 network across North America – where multiple agencies on disparate 911 software solutions can operate and communicate with each other as if they are on a single system – thereby reducing response time and saving lives. The FCC estimates that speeding up emergency response by one minute would save 253,032 lives nationally. Based on the number of public safety agencies CentralSquare serves, and the expected reduction in response time, over 125,000 lives can potentially be saved by first responders nationwide.

“For over 10 years, Tellus has been providing ‘safety without borders,’ erasing the lines between cities, towns and counties so that critical emergency response information can flow effortlessly and automatically to the closest first responder, expediting emergency response and saving lives. Hundreds of agencies have used the Tellus solution to cut down emergency response time. For example, Columbus, Ohio, cut mutual aid resource request time by 60% to just 25-30 seconds because the Tellus solution eliminated call queuing and needing to spell out details over the phone. Similarly, Orange County has reduced time per request from an average of two and a half minutes to just 15 seconds – saving critical seconds on every drowning, cardiac arrest and life-threatening emergency. It’s exciting to join CentralSquare in bringing this powerful technology to the largest community of public safety agencies in North America,” said Tellus President Jonathan Mitchell.

“CentralSquare already provides the broadest, smartest and most unified technology platform for nearly 5,000 public safety agencies across North America. Going forward, seamless two-way integration between computer aided dispatch systems will come standard out-of-the-box on the CentralSquare Public Safety platform. As soon as a community deploys the CentralSquare Public Safety platform, it will be able to seamlessly integrate law enforcement, fire and EMS resources with all neighboring communities. Our solution preserves the autonomy of each dispatch center as it integrates into existing CAD workstations. This eliminates the need for retraining dispatchers and builds on the unique local requirements at each center,” said Steve Seoane, EVP and General Manager of Public Safety at CentralSquare.

“Seamless CAD-to-CAD connectivity is just one step in our vision to ensure that all agencies nationally can easily access each other’s data and resources. We are making record-breaking investments in R&D to ensure that, in using artificial intelligence, machine learning and other technologies, we are building a network where all agencies can quickly respond to emergencies, investigate crimes, pre-detect terror threats and mitigate casualties in natural disasters. Our mission is to make North America safer by making every community smarter and stronger,” said Simon Angove, CEO of CentralSquare.

CentralSquare will continue to support and upgrade all Tellus products for current customers, irrespective of the CAD system that an agency uses, ensuring that citizines can benefit from faster response to emergencies. Financial terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed.