In Colorado, 9-1-1 emergency service is still inconsistently moving into the digital age, and suffering sporadic outages as a result.

Outages have been rising since 2010 and, this year, Colorado is on track to see more outages than were recorded in any of the past six years, according to data compiled by the Colorado Public Utility Commission.

As of mid-August, there have been roughly 28 service outages in the state. There were about 20 outages reported by mid-August in 2012, the worst midyear tally until this year.

The average 9-1-1 outage in Colorado lasts 10 hours. In customer-service terms, that number seems brutal. As the PUC reports, Colorado telecommunications consumers paid for 1.6 million phone minutes in which they could not have contacted 9-1-1 – that’s the the number of minutes 9-1-1 service was down this year so far multiplied by the number of people in the blackout zones, which was roughly 3,000 customers.

The cause of the outage in 69 percent of the cases was either an accidentally cut cable (27.6 percent) or “system failure” (41.4 percent). The percentage of outages caused by system failure is on the rise – the kind of failure that has increased as landlines fall away and wireless communications expand in a state marked by diverse geography, variable weather and a population spread through nearly every nook and cranny.

These are some of the facts that will fuel debate Wednesday at the Capitol, when a six-member legislative task force meets to consider how best to oversee At&T, Comcast, Verizon and the other companies that manage the state’s communication networks.

The task force was established by lawmakers in the spring, the result of a compromise over a bill backed by the powerful telecom lobby that sought to head off new 9-1-1 service regulations being drafted by the state’s utility commission. The bill was opposed by first responders, emergency dispatchers and consumer advocates. Lawmakers set up the task force to consider the issue before any new state regulations or laws could take effect.

During debate over the bill, the companies argued that their operations – emergency services included – could only be regulated by the Federal Communications Commission.

The back-and-forth this year was an offshoot of debate held in 2014, when lawmakers agreed to deregulate the industry but, according to some of the lawmakers involved, not to deregulating emergency services.

“We would never have agreed to deregulating 9-1-1,” said state Sen. Irene Aguilar, D-Denver.

Aguilar, a medical doctor, was prepared to filibuster this year’s bill. She said she had lined up 25 amendments to slow down debate. She also wrote to the FCC to ask whether the state had the authority to regulate emergency services. She received an email reply from David Simpson, chief of the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, which she forwarded to The Colorado Statesman. Simpson welcomed state oversight.

“(The FCC) executes oversight responsibilities in close coordination with state and local 9-1-1 officials,” Simpson wrote. “Our recent 9-1-1 reliability and governance proceedings make clear that we do not seek to pre-empt the states’ authority to regulate 9-1-1 reliability within their own borders if they decide to do so.

“Between the FCC and the States, we expect to use our combined authorities to ensure that 9-1-1 remains a reliable service as Next Generation 9-1-1 services become available and as cybersecurity threats continue to evolve.”

Colorado is not alone in working to shore up outdated 9-1-1 services.

Cable TV personality John Oliver recently mocked emergency communication technology across the country. Car services like Uber can find a caller quicker and more reliably than 9-1-1 dispatchers can, he said, repeating a common complaint.

Some local governments are making good progress in addressing the problem.

The Arkansas-Texas Council of Governments is set to launch a satellite-enabled “next generation” emergency communication service this month that will cover 10 counties in the two states and that is designed to withstand call-center power outages and network crashes.

Colorado’s 9-1-1 task force is made up of legislative heavy-hitters from both sides of the aisle, which suggests opposing interests will enjoy strong representation.

The task force is co-chaired by Senate Minority Leader Mark Scheffel, R-Sedalia, and House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst. The other members are Senate Assistant Minority Leader Rollie Heath, D-Boulder, House Majority Leader Crisanta Duran, D-Denver, House Assistant Minority Leader Polly Lawrence, R-Littleton, as well as Aquilar.

– john.tomasic@gemail.com