Commissioners urge more 911 redundancy after fiber cut knocked out phone service

Fergus County commissioners spent a significant portion of their first 2026 meeting discussing vulnerabilities in local emergency communications after a recent fiber-optic cut left portions of the county without the ability to call 911.

A commissioner described the incident: a fiber cut knocked out service at a key point, shut down nearby cell towers and affected some landline connections, leaving residents without a direct way to reach emergency dispatch. "They purchased a dish for Starlink and it's being wired. So that backs up 911, but it doesn't do any good for the community who needs to call 911 for help," a commissioner said during the meeting.

County officials said the dispatch center has installed a Starlink dish to back up dispatch operations, but commissioners emphasized that a dispatch-side satellite link does not restore individual callers' ability to reach 911 from cell phones or home landlines when the underlying carrier's fiber route is severed. Members discussed the difficulty of creating redundancy when a single fiber cut or a single carrier affects multiple towers and services; one commissioner asked whether cell-tower providers could be required to duplicate fiber paths or provide secondary connections.

Commissioners also summarized work by a state study commission focused largely on radios and responder equipment. Speakers said the current discussion at the state level has centered on radios for first responders, and they expressed concern that longstanding per-county pass-through funding could shift to state-level distribution, reducing local control over how 911-related funds are spent. Meeting remarks cited rising equipment costs: refurbished handheld radios were described in discussion as running around $800 while newer units and vehicle radios were cited as costing several thousand dollars each.

Officials noted that many rural emergency services rely on volunteers whose equipment budgets are constrained, and that shifting funding and rising equipment prices could strain volunteer departments and county budgets. Commissioners discussed practical stopgaps — such as public facilities with internet access (libraries) or temporary Starlink deployments — but stressed the need for longer-term redundancy planning involving carriers, regional 911 partners and state agencies.

No formal action or funding allocation was adopted at the meeting; commissioners asked staff to record voting members for regional 911 bodies and to continue monitoring study commission recommendations and funding changes. The transcript does not record a formal motion or roll-call vote on specific 911 policy changes.