At Northern911 our core business is helping people in times of need and handling emergency calls. It’s what we do all day, every day. We provide 911 (E911 and VoIP) Call Routing, Alarm Monitoring, Fire Dispatch and Telematics dispatching. Our services are proven and our results are excellent. We care about quality!

PHYSICAL LOCATION

The Northern911 Emergency Response Centre (ERC) is located within the head office of Northern Communications in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.The centre has been engineered with the latest technology and security to ensure that emergency services for our life safety clients will continue no matter what the situation. This attention to detail has allowed us to grow and expand over the last 50 plus years. The ERC has been certified and is inspected on an annual basis by the Underwriters Laboratories of Canada (ULC), Canada’s premier organization for independent, not-for-profit product safety testing and certification.

Some of the major features of the ERC include:

• The building covers three floors and about 12,000 square feet, and is owned 100% by the corporation. This gives Northern Communications the ability to make any physical modifications that we deem necessary to enhance our security and monitoring capabilities.
• The ERC is built on a solid concrete floor and has a two hour fire rating on all interior perimeter walls. All windows in the protected area have bars on them. A full washroom exists within the protected area.
• The ERC site is within a quarter mile of the main telephone company Central Office switch (Minto) in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. The telephone cables enter the building through an underground conduit and are terminated in a room that is locked and alarmed. They are then run to the ERC via a protected and separate conduit.
• Electricity enters the building in another area of the building as well. From the main distribution point, it is routed to the ERC through conduit. If there is a power disruption a number of safeguards have been put in place:
• All “critical” devices, computers and telephone systems are backed up on a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Systems)
• Many devices have an individual UPS as well as being on the main building UPS.
• Depending on the device and the call volume load at the time of the outage, on average we can operate for a number of hours on our emergency battery system.
• In a power outage everything continues to run on the batteries. The Generator has an auto-start system and as soon as there is an interruption in the hydro the Generator automatically starts and goes on-line to power the entire building within about one minute. By powering the entire building, all services continue to run so our heating, air conditioning, all lights and all electrical plugs continue to operate as normal. We even make coffee if needed!
• When power is restored, the generator control system switches the building back over to the commercial supply, powers down the generator and returns it to standby.
• On a scheduled basis we test both the batteries and the generator individually under load to confirm that all is working well.
• Entrance to the ERC is only granted after a number of security measures have been completed.
• To enter the ERC, all personnel must traverse two independent security doors. Both doors may not be opened at the same time. Throughout the complete entry process, personnel are monitored via surveillance cameras.
• Employees of the ERC are granted security cards and must swipe the card to unlock the exterior door. Those visitors without a card must telephone into the ERC, state their business, and be granted access by the ERC supervisor.
• In either case, once the exterior door has been opened, the individual enters a security area between doors where they are monitored by camera. The employees then scan their finger print in a biometric reader. Visitors are viewed on video and when their identity is confirmed they may be granted access.
• The exterior door must be completely shut before the interior door can be opened to prevent unauthorized access.
  
• In the event that the building comes under attack we have a “panic” button that sends a signal to another ULC listed alarm monitoring station to advise them to immediately send the police.
• In addition to the “panic” button we also have a motion detector so that in the event there is no motion in the protected area for thirty (30) minutes the alarm is sent out as well.