APCO, Wireless Industry Fall Short on E911 Agreement
Negotiations failed between the wireless industry and public safety on E-911 wireless location accuracy rules, a public safety group told the FCC. The issue has sparked a huge fight, with public safety advocating application of the requirements at a local community level, and industry pushing for statewide application. After months of negotiations, “an impasse has been reached and the parties appear to agree that further negotiations are unlikely to reach an agreement,” said Assn. of Public-Safety Communications Officials International (APCO).
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APCO and other members of the Network Reliability & Interoperability Council (NRIC) went to the negotiation table after APCO dissented last March on an E-911 location accuracy proposal NRIC sent the FCC. Commission rules say carriers must provide location data accurate within 50-100 meters (varying by location technology) for 67% of calls. But the rules don’t specify the geographic area within which that level of accuracy must be met.
The 49-member NRIC recommended in March that accuracy testing be done statewide, but APCO called the report “a threat to the public’s safety,” since E-911 services are requested, deployed and utilized locally (CD March 30 p2). APCO’s position was consistent with its 2004 petition that other public safety groups backed. Since March, an NRIC focus group has been working to improve the proposal.
“When we realized that the NRIC report was not as clarifying as it should be, we agreed to come together and to negotiate an agreement again in good faith,” said David Jones, pres. of NENA, which backed the NRIC recommendations. “We have achieved a reasonable solution,” he said: “It’s unfortunate that APCO is not supportive and that it has to opt away from the negotiations.”
Unlike the approach in NRIC’s March report, the new proposal “ensures accountability for all parties,” Jones said. The new proposal reaffirms that for now, wireless carriers should provide accuracy location for 911 calls at the state level, but sets PSAP-level as a goal and “outlines the process to move toward that goal. The proposal ensures that both carriers and PSAPs are making the best effort possible to achieve PSAP-level accuracy,” Jones said.
“There are technology limitations in some parts of the country that would keep carriers from compliance” with any rules requiring PSAP-level compliance, said Mary Boyd, chair of the NRIC focus group. “The wireless industry is committed to work with the best technology available today to [eventually] reach a PSAP level, but it’s a technology issue,” she said: “I am optimistic as technology advances,” the PSAP-level accuracy measurement will become possible.
APCO said it can’t support state-level compliance. It acknowledged that a PSAP-level accuracy requirement would be “difficult to meet in some areas by some carriers at the present time,” and said it made “significant concessions.” For example, it said it “indicated a willingness to accept a PSAP-level accuracy requirement conditioned on an enforcement policy that expressly recognizes and accepts best practices of carriers to achieve PSAP-level compliance. We also stated we would support elimination of any across-the-board compliance testing requirements. Notwithstanding these efforts, the wireless carriers have been unwilling to accept an accuracy requirement other than state-level.”
“I am not sure this is a concession, because they [APCO] are still sticking to their base point,” Jones said: “They believe the rule should be established at the PSAP level.” “Everybody makes concessions as part of any discussions and that’s part of the process,” said CTIA Senior Vp-Gen. Counsel Michael Altschul: “The wireless industry also made significant representations. We were happy to talk about how we want to provide accountability at the PSAP level.” Boyd said the NRIC focus group stayed “consistent” with its earlier recommendations: “We have a lot of parties not only wireless carriers but also other public safety groups.”
APCO’s stance seems to frustrate others involved. “That’s unfortunate that we are still not able to reach consensus on recent work,” Boyd said: “We worked out a process of complaint resolution,” which was the main focus of recent discussions. “This is 2 months of work that nobody wants to throw away,” Jones said: “It’s not reasonable to set up a rule that can’t be complied with… The FCC should recognize that this negotiated process, which includes all the parties, achieved a reasonable outcome.” The recent talks involved wireless carriers, CTIA, NENA, the 911 Institute, APCO and many others, Boyd said. The most recent proposal hasn’t been submitted to the full NRIC, she said. “We obviously are not going to stop our efforts here and we want to build on the progress made,” said Altschul.
The FCC seems to be leaning toward APCO’s proposal. An aide to Chmn. Martin said earlier this year his boss had “some sympathy” for APCO’s position. He said Martin has “some concern” about the NRIC recommendation: “It doesn’t seem to have a lot of sense if half of Ohio has just terrible accuracy that can be made up by the other half of Ohio. We have some sympathy for APCO’s view that you need to look at this on a more granular basis.” The FCC is expected to look at ways to do the averaging at a level below statewide, but the debate likely will be over how far the agency can go below the state level given technical limitations, we're told.
NRIC canceled its Sept. 21 meeting Thurs., offering no explanation and setting no new date. E-911 recommendations implementation was among the meeting’s main topics.