New phone system for Marquette County Central Dispatch

Marquette County Central Dispatch will be purchasing some state-of-the-art equipment to upgrade its phone lines.

The Marquette County Board of Commissioners approved the upgrade at its meeting Tuesday.

Central dispatch is transitioning from copper wiring to an IP, or Internet, based system that allows for all phone calls to be digitally recorded.

“We’re in the process of upgrading to and IP–a digital fiber network–which will allow for far more data and a lot more features for us,” Marquette County Central Dispatch manager Gary Johnson said.  “As of right now, we’ll be the first in the state once we go live with that.”

The improvements to central dispatch is part of the U.P. 911 Authority, which aims to upgrade and streamline all eight dispatch locations in the Upper Peninsula.

“We’ve gone to a shared computer aided dispatch system that seven of the eight dispatch centers in the U.P. now share a common computer aided dispatch,” Johnson said.  “We have all the same phone equipment across all eight centers in the U.P. and this is just another step in the direction of all of our centers sharing equipment and sharing maintenance costs.”

The new phone system and all upgrades should be installed by 2015.