Progress Being Made on Texting to 911, FCC’s Furth Says

A big debate has been whether SMS will become part of the answer, an interim solution for texting to 911. “What fundamentally drives the debate about SMS is it looks one way on the consumer side and another way on the” public safety answering point side, Furth said. The ubiquity of SMS is an advantage, he said. “From a consumer’s perspective it is something that they are very used to,” he said. “If you have to learn how to use a new means of communications in an emergency when your house is on fire … it’s not going to work."

Members of the FCC’s Emergency Access Advisory Committee have pressed for a quick decision on an interim solution for texting to 911. “We are tracking their deliberations and their recommendations very closely,” Furth said.

"People are used to 911 as this almost magical service,” said Charle McKee, Sprint Nextel vice president. “It’s real-time and there’s an instant communication happening. The concern is trying to put together a … patch that will do 911 is that you'll end up with something that is not necessarily going to be real. Text may not always go through. You don’t always get assurance from police that they've received our text.” The move to NG 911 is critical, speakers agreed. “What I would say is that from the commission’s perspective with next-generation 911, we can’t look at it in isolation because we have to look at it as part of the communications ecosystem,” Furth said. “How do we make sure that we use the best communications technology that’s available to enhance public safety?”

911 needs to be able to handle texts and other data, said Brian Fontes, CEO of the National Emergency Number Association. “This is how people communicate today and yet our 911 systems are for the most part voice centric, stuck in almost last century technology.” AT&T Assistant Vice President Jim Bugel noted that when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the smartphone didn’t even exist. “How people communicate has changed rapidly,” he said.

"The legacy systems that are out there are almost at the end of their lives,” said Rep. Stacey Fitts, a member of the Maine House of Representatives. “They're obsolete. They're hanging on by a thread. … We just need to make sure we have a system that will adapt for the long haul."

CTIA Conference Notebook

Cricket is looking to skew more of its product line to smartphones over the rest of the year, when it plans to offer more processing power, more memory and bigger screens at competitive prices, product manager Kevin Foth told us. Next-gen Cricket smartphones, due out in the second half, are likely to start at $139, he said, $10 off their current entry point. The company is planning a 1 GHz smartphone with a 4-inch screen in the next few months, he said. Cricket will continue to offer feature phones in the $49-89 range, where prices aren’t expected to fall further, he said. But there’s room for price movement in the hot smartphone segment, he said: “Our goal is to drive the” manufacturer’s suggested retail price “of smartphones down to a range our customers are comfortable with.” Cricket also plans to have its first LTE phone later this year, he said. -- RD

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Wilson Electronics will bow signal boosters for mobile devices operating on Verizon and AT&T 4G networks, the company said. The $129 boosters aim to improve data transfer speeds and battery life and to reduce dead zones and dropped connections caused by trees, building materials, weather and other interference, a spokesman told us. Handsets use inductive coupling with the boosters’ cradles, which can work with mobile handsets and MiFi devices, he said. The Verizon model is due in stores soon, and the AT&T model is due out in Q3, the spokesman said. The models also boost 3G signals on all networks, Wilson said.