FUNDING, COOPERATION STILL CHALLENGES FOR E911, FCC FORUM TOLD

FCC Chmn. Powell said he hoped the initiative would open a “new era of cooperation in the E911 debate.” Participants in an all-day series of panels on E911, in which all 5 FCC commissioners participated, cited recommendations for better coordination, including using teams of experts who already had implemented service and could advise local govts. that hadn’t, which AT&T Wireless’s Karl Korsmo called “pre- deployment teams.” Others called for federal legislation that would bar state officials from “raiding” state E911 funds for other programs, depleting funds in some states to bolster budget deficits. Several public safety officials suggested a need for network elements such as interconnecting routers of 911 centers. Some wireless industry officials warned the FCC against expanding E911 mandates while Phase 1 and 2 services still were being implemented. The coordination initiative is designed to bring together various parties on implementation issues, including on how certain communities have sold funding and operational issues.

While the FCC doesn’t have jurisdiction over state and local funding issues, frustration over how lack of money is hurting rollout efforts cropped up repeatedly Tues. FCC Comr. Adelstein, who moderated a panel on PSAP funding, said “nothing else matters if PSAPs aren’t fully able and fully funded to provide the service.” He said PSAPs faced 2 major challenges in that area -- developing a level of expertise to implement E911 and getting and keeping the funds they needed. “As we are all tragically aware, some states with E911 cost- recovery systems have diverted those funds,” Adelstein said. He said Senate Telecom Subcommittee Chmn. Burns (R-Mont.) told a broadband summit hosted by NENA and NARUC that he was considering a bill to halt such practices. “As a nation should we attempt to build a national wireless E911 infrastructure using local government funding as a model?” asked Bill Hinkle, chmn. of APCO’s Project Locate. He asked whether there was a role for the federal govt. because E911 was a backbone for homeland security efforts.

AT&T Wireless has pledged its engineers, technicians and vendors would work with groups such as NENA and the Assn. of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO) to create “pre- deployment” Phase 1 and Phase 2 teams to help agencies that were at an earlier stage of deploying service, Korsmo said. He said the industry was ready to begin deploying the new teams, suggesting the possibility of one for each state. Phase 2 deployment can become more efficient as such collaborative efforts increase, he said. Carriers and public safety officials have undertaken “hundreds” of successful Phase 2 deployments, he said: “We need to do more to apply our learning for the benefit of those who haven’t.”

Several panelists in a roundtable that included 34 industry, public safety and state and local govt. officials emphasized a need for greater public education on E911, particularly amid higher expectations on what location technology could deliver. Powell called consumer outreach “a very important issue that has not yet received the attention it deserves. Informing consumer expectations about how and when wireless E911 will work is an essential part of the puzzle.” Powell said recent quarterly reports submitted by wireless carriers on their progress toward E911 rollout had shown “increased momentum in deployment… I have every confidence that these numbers will show significant further improvement when we receive the May 1 quarterly reports.”

Former FCC Office of Engineering & Technology Chief Dale Hatfield, whom the FCC commissioned last year to conduct an inquiry on wireless E911, said some coordination efforts he called for in his report already were under way. His inquiry cited the “seriously antiquated” infrastructure for emergency calls and stressed the complexity of overlapping issues that had stalled E911 rollout in some cases. He pointed to factors such as chronic underfunding and a need for better coordination in systems engineering and standards development. Hatfield said Phase 2 service appeared to be available from public safety answering points that covered 35 million Americans. Several participants in the panel discussions said they supported the Hatfield report’s call for a national E911 program office to oversee coordination efforts, perhaps at the Dept. of Homeland Security.

“I have seen figures that suggest we have a long way to go,” Hatfield said. Nearly 2 years after they could have made formal requests for Phase 2, PSAPs covering more than half the U.S. population haven’t yet done so, he said. That creates a possible “Swiss cheese situation” for PSAPs, in which an emergency caller could be found in one city but not necessarily in an adjoining suburb where E911 services weren’t available yet, he said. “Even worse, at the switch of a wireless carrier or its vendor the exact location may be known, but the information may not be deployed to first responders if the necessary upgrades for PSAP equipment have not been made.”

There has been a cultural shift among entities that have to cooperate on E911 deployment, compared with a time when the public safety community viewed wireless carriers as “carpetbaggers,” NENA’s Melcher said. But he said an IXC such as AT&T had 85-90 compatible switches that were interconnected and could back each other up. “That does not exist on the public safety side,” he said, as there are 800 switches serving PSAPs and “none of them talk to each other in a fashion that could back each other up.” He also said LATA boundaries shouldn’t exist for E911. Because E911 is “sacred and special,” if there are facilities in one place and a demand for E911 service in another place, “we should be able to string the wires and make it happen.”

CTIA Senior Vp-Policy & Administration Michael Altschul said: “I want to debunk any notion that wireless carriers are foot-dragging in their deployment of wireless E911 services.” He said carriers now were operating Phase 2 services that were serving more than 10% of the U.S. population. “I realize that that isn’t enough,” he said, but the sector still is “well on its way.”

Some wireless carriers said remaining challenges tended to be operational -- not technology -- issues. AT&T Wireless’s Korsmo said 1,300 PSAPs now received Phase 1 service from the carrier and 340 receive Phase 2 service. “The critical path issues are usually today not the wireless carrier location technology but rather procedural and coordination issues,” he said, citing issues such as getting trunk orders processed by LECs and obtaining permits for new wireless antennas. Citing the Hatfield report, Altschul said “changing requirements can only add to delays in wireless E911 services. Now is not the time to be moving the goalpost, while carriers and PSAPs and all the stakeholders are so totally focused.”

Sprint PCS’s Charles McKee said his company had deployed Phase 2 services in 16 states and in the next quarter had more than 300 PSAPs scheduled for Phase 2 testing and deployment. He said Sprint had sold more than 8 million GPS- enabled handsets and by July expected 100% of all new handset activations to be GPS-enabled phones throughout its network. Sprint has finished installation of equipment needed for Phase 2 in its back-office and other systems and is deploying service to “multiple PSAPs on a daily basis.”

Several industry officials urged the FCC to not expand E911 mandates until the current rollouts of service were completed, while public safety officials said new technology should be developed with E911 requirements in mind. “What wireless carriers should be focused on right now is deploying services and that’s what we are laser focused on,” Sprint’s McKee said. “Expanding into other areas is not what we need to be focused on right now.” The FCC in Dec. approved a further notice to study whether mobile satellite service operators, multiline phone systems, IP telephony providers and telematics providers should have to meet E911 mandates.

While lauding efforts that had been made on E911, incoming APCO Pres. Gregory Ballentine said a “reality check” was that “throughout the majority of America deployment has not occurred.” The number of PSAP requests has declined, which he said involved LEC readiness and costs for the public safety community. “At present, there seems to be no realistic sense of obligations of third parties such as the local exchange carrier or database provider,” he said. LECs play a critical role in deploying E911, but their responsibilities in supporting implementation still aren’t well-defined, he said. “The Commission must define these responsibilities and promote proper accountability.” The decline in PSAP requests for E911 is related to the budgets that they must compile in figuring out the cost of deployment, he said.

NENA’s Melcher said the cost estimate of $8.4 billion to make PSAPs ready for wireless E911 in the next 5 years was formulated by the group’s Strategic Wireless Action Team (SWAT), a group of private sector, govt. and public safety officials that has been examining E911 implementation issues.

Despite challenges, panelists also touted programs that had found new ways to streamline E911 rollouts. Saralyn Doty, of the Kansas City area’s Mid-America Regional Council, said her agency became so frustrated trying to find accurate information from a LEC on implementation costs that it decided to buy its own selective router and database to cut the LEC out of the process altogether. The agency first thought it would save more than $1 million from working with a LEC on the service, but discovered that routing charges would top $2.4 million, she said. “We didn’t want to wait for the LEC to be ready. We wanted to start saving lives now,” she said. Ind. State Treasurer Tim Berry, who is chmn. of the state’s Wireless E911 Advisory Board, said carriers and local govts. in the state were entitled to reimbursement for all costs associated with wireless E911 implementation. The board conducts a biennial review to ensure that carriers are being reimbursed properly, he said. The board so far has collected $63 million in subscriber surcharges and distributed more than $40 million to wireless carriers and local govts., he said. Berry said 90 of 92 counties in Ind. were accepting Phase 1 E911 calls from at least one wireless carrier.