Assn. of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO) and Nation...

FCC Wireless Bureau Chief Thomas Sugrue recently directed largest ILECs to make publicly available certain information on interconnections needed for E911 deployment by Aug. 28. APCO and NENA also told Powell: “We urge the Commission to take affirmative action regarding carriers that are clinging to questionable location technologies and, as a result, are falling well short of implementation deadlines and accuracy requirements.” APCO and NENA said “most troubling problems” that remained for E911 implementation included failure of many LECs to cooperate with public safety answering points and wireless carriers or to provide on-time upgrades to their automatic location information (ALI) databases. Groups recently lauded Wireless Bureau letter to LECs asking for detailed information on their E911 deployment. “However, we believe that the Commission will need to consider taking further action, including adoption of provisions requiring LECs to proceed in a timely manner to provide necessary elements of Phase 2 operation,” groups said. They also urged Commission to take “a hard look” at Phase 2 rollout of E911 by GSM carriers using Enhanced Observed Time Difference (E-OTD) of Arrival technology. APCO said it still had petition of reconsideration pending on agency’s grant 2 years ago of waiver to VoiceStream Wireless. That waiver had extended certain Phase 2 implementation deadlines for carrier and allowed use of E-OTD technology. APCO and NENA raised concerns about implementation progress of VoiceStream, Cingular and AT&T Wireless. They said Cingular and AT&T Wireless recently submitted reports to FCC “indicating major E-OTD test failures, raising further questions regarding its deployment schedule and ultimate accuracy levels.” APCO and NENA called on FCC to resolve its petition for reconsideration and “to require VoiceStream to consider alternative technologies as possible replacements for E-OTD.”