Rethinking the front door to public safety

A parent calling from a fog-shrouded highway. A teacher kneeling beside a child in distress. A dispatcher parsing panic through static. Every second matters — because each one could mean the difference between life and loss.

For most people around the world, calling 911—or the local equivalent—is the front door to public safety, the thread connecting crisis to response. But that thread was spun more than 50 years ago, for a world of rotary phones and fixed addresses. And it’s fraying under modern pressure. The emergency communication systems that communities rely on today weren’t built for smartphones that stream live video, messages that share photos, or data that moves globally in milliseconds.

Today, more than 80 percent of 911 calls come from mobile devices, and yet most dispatch centers still operate on infrastructure built for landlines. Each call is its own island — disconnected from the tools, sensors, and networks that could make response faster, safer, and smarter.

And the strain on emergency communications centers is only growing. Across the United States, the average call taker/dispatcher handles nearly 2,400 calls a month, or 80 calls per day, according to the National Emergency Number Association (NENA). According to the 2025 Pulse of 911 Survey from Carbyne, in partnership with NENA, 86% of centers experience high call-volumes at least once a week or more frequently and 35% report high call-volumes daily. From the same report, 63% reported a non-emergency call volume between 50-80%, and 72% of centers reported having as many as 10 vacancies. Not only are centers facing a high-volume of calls, but they’re short-staffed and strained by outdated technology.

A 2024 federal review called the need to modernize “urgent.” The question isn’t whether 911 should evolve — but how to do it now.

The next era: Axon 911

Fortunately, that transformation is now underway. With the acquisition of Prepared, Axon took the first major step in building a next-generation emergency communications network — the future we’re calling Axon 911.

And with today’s agreement to acquire Carbyne, that vision accelerates. Together, Prepared and Carbyne address two critical layers of the 911 stack: Prepared enhances intelligence and efficiency on top of existing systems, while Carbyne modernizes the core infrastructure itself. Each delivers powerful value on its own — and together they represent the dual engine powering the transformation of 911 as we know it.

Prepared: Intelligence for today’s 911

Prepared is an AI-powered layer that sits on top of existing 911 infrastructure, instantly making call takers, dispatchers and field responders more efficient — without requiring agencies to replace their core systems.

Its real-time AI listens, transcribes, and translates calls as they happen, turning chaos into clarity:

• Spoken words appear instantly on screen, with live translation for callers in other languages.

• Key cues like “trapped,” “injured,” or “fire” are automatically flagged.

• Non-emergency calls can be routed to AI agents, freeing up 911 lines for true emergencies.

Beyond real-time triage, Prepared delivers post-call impact through automated summaries, quality assurance, and training tools — capabilities previously impossible at scale.

Prepared is already live in 1,000+ centers across 49 states, serving nearly 100 million people. It’s the intelligence layer that makes legacy systems smarter and human response stronger.

Carbyne: The modern 911 backbone

Carbyne goes deeper, replacing outdated 911 core infrastructure with a cloud-native, AI-powered call-handling platform.

Where Prepared enhances existing systems, Carbyne redefines the foundation — delivering modern routing, resiliency, and scalability for agencies ready to fully modernize.

• Routes voice, text, and video in real time, even under heavy network load or during disasters.

• Supports 911, 3-1-1, and non-emergency lines within a single secure network.

• Enables bidirectional, real-time voice-to-voice translation — allowing dispatchers and callers to communicate across languages instantly.

Carbyne’s infrastructure is trusted by hundreds of emergency communications centers worldwide, including major metro agencies managing millions of calls each year. It is designed to maintain reliability when and where it matters most.

Better together: Powering Axon 911

Prepared brings understanding. Carbyne delivers continuity and resilience.

Together, they form the vision for Axon 911 — seamlessly integrated into the broader Axon ecosystem. A world where:

• Rich data from calls flows simultaneously into Axon Fusus, adding context, analytics, and situational awareness to an already robust operating system.

• Everything can now be seen, analyzed, and acted upon instantly through a single pane of glass, linking call takers, officers, and command centers through a shared operational view that turns isolated data into collective awareness.

• From there, operators can trigger Axon DFR (Drone as First Responder) directly from Fusus, Axon’s AI-powered Assistant, to deliver updates through responder officers’ body-worn cameras, and evidence is automatically archived in Axon Evidence.

In practice: A call in motion

It starts with a single call.

A driver reports a multi-car crash on a rain-slick interstate. Dozens of other calls are coming in from the same storm — downed power lines, flooded streets, branches blocking roads.

Inside the 911 center, non-emergency calls are automatically routed to AI agents, keeping the critical 911 lines open. Within seconds, Carbyne’s cloud-native backbone authenticates the call and routes it to the correct center — even as nearby networks strain under weather-induced outages. The caller’s precise GPS coordinates appear instantly on screen, followed by a live video feed that gives dispatchers a clear view of the scene.

Prepared’s AI engine goes to work. It transcribes the caller’s words in real time, detects stress and urgency, and automatically translates when the caller switches between English and Spanish. Keywords like “trapped” and “injured” are flagged for the dispatcher. A concise AI summary builds on-screen as the call unfolds, turning chaos into clarity in seconds.

Simultaneously, the data flows into Axon Fusus, where the incident appears on a live map inside the police department’s real-time operations center. Nearby traffic cameras, body-worn footage, and environmental sensors merge into the same operational picture. A supervisor requests Axon Air DFR support — and a drone launches from a nearby dock, streaming live video back to dispatch in less than a minute.

Responding officers receive updates through Axon’s AI-powered Assistant, which transcribes critical details into their body cameras en route. When they arrive, everyone — dispatchers, officers, and command — is working from the same shared operational view.

When the scene is secure, every artifact — the call transcript, AI summary, video feed, and drone footage — is automatically archived in Axon Evidence. Supervisors can review performance inside Prepared for dispatch or within Axon Records and Evidence for field operations. The entire call to closure chain is connected, structured, and ready for review or training — no manual data transfer, no silos, no lost context.

The result is a data stream that doesn’t end when the call disconnects. It moves through dispatch, field response, investigation, and review, enriching every layer of public safety. A moment that once relied on fragmented tools and human memory now flows as one continuous, intelligent system — faster, clearer, and more capable at every turn.

Beyond the emergency

The same technology transforming crisis response is now redefining what’s possible beyond it. Today, Prepared and Carbyne enable agencies to modernize non-emergency lines, training, quality assurance, and data analytics. Supervisors can replay and analyze calls for coaching, AI can identify performance patterns, and leaders can use real-time metrics to make smarter staffing and policy decisions.

Just as Axon revolutionized how agencies capture, manage, and learn from evidence after an incident, Axon 911 will bring that same workflow and intelligence to the moment someone calls for help.

Together, Prepared and Carbyne extend the reach of Axon’s connected ecosystem into the heart of emergency communications — elevating every call from a voice for help to a force for action.

The next chapter

The 20th century built 911 as a lifeline — a call for help when seconds mattered most. But as emergencies grow more complex and technology evolves, that lifeline must evolve, too.

The 21st century is rebuilding 911 into something greater: an intelligent, connected network that listens, learns, and acts at the speed of need. One that unites people, data, and devices to deliver clarity when chaos strikes.

Axon 911 will represent that next chapter — transforming every call into actionable insight, every second into opportunity, and every response into a smarter, safer outcome. It’s not just the future of emergency communications. It’s the foundation of a more connected, resilient public safety ecosystem.