-=> On 05-22-06  02:47,  Bj”rn Felten <=-
 -=> spoke to Bob Ackley about "Free" emergency number s <=-

 BF> Neither do I, but in Sweden we have 19 stations evenly 
 BF> spread over the country. With us having 1/30th of the US 
 BF> population that should scale up to 570 stations over at 
 BF> your place.
 
 BA> (Iowa has about 90 of those, and Nebraska has 93).

 BF> That's interesting. If those numbers are typical for the rest of
 BF> the US  that means you have abt. 5,000 stations. Far less than the 

   Not sure how you got from 90 to 5000, but if it was by population
   scaling, then you are about 3 db low:-}}  Iowa has 1/100 th the
   population of the full country.

 BF> 60.000 that Dale guessed for, even if you double the number
 BF> to compensate the more populated states.
 
   Actually, what I said was the your figure of $600 million would fund
   no more than the salary costs of 60,000 stations according to the
   estimates I presented -- without taking into account the costs of the
   infrastructure needed.   I don't know how many 9-1-1 stations there
   are, but would certainly expect that it would be more than 5,000.  I
   stick by my rebuttal to your trivializing the cost of the system by
   saying "Surely your 911 service cannot cost that much?"   I believe
   that it costs more than that, and that the fee on the telephones only
   pays part of the cost.



 BA> The operations center is usually co-located with the county sheriff's
 BA> office and dispatcher

 BF> So one could say that it's usually not a full time job 
 BF> (the operators perform other duties between calls)?

   Perhaps not a full time job in some rural areas, but in many cities
   there are multiple 9-1-1 operators, hired and trained to do exactly
   that job, running multiple stations at one center.  You can easily
   look up web based job searches which are advertising for starting
   9-1-1 operators at figures like $15 per hour.   Supervisor jobs are
   advertised for twice that amount and more.

                               Dale Shipp
                  fido_261_1466 (at) comcast (dot) net
                              (1:261/1466)


... Shipwrecked on Hesperus in Columbia, Maryland. 23:44:50, 21 May 2006
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30

--- Maximus/NT 3.01