EAAC Urges Panel to Study How to Pay Costs of NG911 Network
The FCC’s Emergency Access Advisory Committee this week made public a draft version of its long-awaited report on making 911 easier to use by people with disabilities. EAAC acknowledged that the move to next-generation 911 systems will take years to accomplish, but argued that handicapped people should be able to make emergency calls using devices they already use every day. EAAC filed the draft report in response to an FCC notice of proposed rulemaking on short- and long-term options for enabling consumers to send text messages to 911. The final version is still being readied for release by the group, which was created as part of the Twenty-First Century Communication and Video Accessibility Act of 2010.
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The FCC should “promulgate rules that individuals with disabilities be able to contact NG9-1-1 using the same devices that they ... use for daily communication,” the report said (http://xrl.us/bmky7s). “Users need to use familiar technologies and methods, such as text/audio/video communication, when calling in an emergency and therefore both want and need to be able to access NG911 from the same devices they will use every day.” EAAC said in an emergency “people turn to what is known, and are not in a position (nor do they remember) to use something new.” In another key finding, EAAC said individuals should be able to contact call centers directly.
The FCC, working with the Department of Justice, industry, academia, consumer groups and public safety, should move forward on an interim way for people to text 911, the report said, touching on a key issue before the FCC (see related report in this issue). But the EAAC did not recommend a particular technology. “The EAAC intends to take this topic up in 2012 and submit a separate report on this important topic,” the report said. “From a consumer standpoint, direct access via mobile text to 911 is a critical goal.” EAAC noted that FCC officials said in an early meeting of the group that interim solutions “were within scope.”
EAAC suggested that ultimately disabled users should be able to call 911 using a variety of technologies, including “different forms of data, text, video, voice, and/or captioned telephony individually or any combination thereof.” They should also be able to connect “using any device currently used, including TTY,” the report said. Disabled users should not have to pay extra to use any of these technologies beyond the fees “paid by the provider’s subscribers generally,” the report contends.
EAAC supported a recommendation by the FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council that the commission set up a blue-ribbon panel to address NG911
funding issues (CD March 15 p1).