Text-to-911 Item Details Revealed; FCC Pleased with Trials Despite Low Usage
MINNEAPOLIS -- The text-to-911 item up for consideration will propose a regulatory framework for all wireless carriers to deliver texts to Public Safety Answering Points, and will propose a timetable for deployment, an FCC Public Safety Bureau official told the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials convention Wednesday. The item will propose implementation of a standardized “bounce back” message, requiring carriers to respond to customers who text 911 where the service is not yet available, said bureau attorney advisor Patrick Donovan. That message would direct the texter to dial 911. “We haven’t had a whole lot of pushback from carriers on this,” Donovan said. “It seems like something that is pretty easily doable.” People wouldn’t need to have a text plan in order to send a text to 911, he said. The item could be an order, a further notice of proposed rulemaking, or both; it has not yet been circulated on the eighth floor, he said.
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Donovan said the commission was “very pleased” with the three text-to-911 trials going on in Durham, N.C., Vermont and Iowa, but said the low usage numbers in Durham were “a bit surprising.” Jim Soukup, Durham’s 911 director, said that despite intensive advertising, since its text-to-911 program began a little over a year ago, “we've gotten one text message that was real.” That text message was not an emergency, he said; it was about an alarm going off at a construction site. There were also a few accidental texts, he said. But there have been no texts from the 25,000 deaf or hard-of-hearing individuals in the area, he said. Durham’s PSAP handles about 1,000 voice calls a day. The low text-to-911 numbers are similar to those in Blackhawk County, Iowa, which accepts calls for the entire state, Donovan said. The commission is still waiting on the numbers from Vermont, which started its program more recently. The low numbers are consistent with the locations in Europe that have implemented a similar service, said Kathy McMahon, an APCO technical services manager.
"We didn’t know what was going to happen once we turned this on,” Soukup said. “I'm surprised we didn’t get more than what we've gotten.” But that number is about the same number of 911 requests that came in over TTY -- in the past year there were probably one or two TTY calls to the PSAP, he said. “It may be just a process like with 911 decades ago. It took a while for the public to dial 911 rather than their old education number,” Soukup said. “It’s going to make a difference for somebody, someday, in a huge way."
Durham has tried to impress upon the public that texting 911 is not a substitute for calling 911, he said. And the public is smart enough to realize that people shouldn’t text if they're having a cardiac arrest, or a burglary in progress, he said. “You only text 911 if talking to us puts you in jeopardy, or you are deaf or hearing impaired.” Soukup thinks this should be the approach nationally. “If we get a text, one of the prescriptive questions we would ask is, ‘Can you call us?'"
Even given the low numbers, PSAPs aren’t worried that the cost to implement the texting system won’t be worth the investment, Donovan said. “Their biggest fear is that they'll be overwhelmed with text messages.” The vendor, TCS, will provide services that will be “either free or close to free for the PSAPs,” he said. The FCC’s item will also aim to educate consumers about the benefits and limitations of texting to 911, Donovan said. “There’s a need for an agency to step in and play the role of referee, of timekeeper and of educator of the public.” The FCC is really the only appropriate agency with the ability to do that, he said. “That’s the role we envision ourselves playing."
There are still plenty of technical challenges to work out, McMahon said. There needs to be an appropriate method to route text messages to the appropriate PSAP, she said. And they'll need to determine the preferred method for receiving texts, and how to measure the call handling statistics, she said. It’s also going to be important, from an architecture standpoint, for vendors to work on a standardized interface to deliver texts into the call handling systems “so that there aren’t multiple proprietary interfaces out there.” Vendors are agreeable to working on a joint architecture, she said. “Everyone’s come to the table and they're very willing to work on a joint architectural standard.” PSAPs should determine on the local level how long the call taker stands ready to wait for the next incoming text, before setting the session aside and accepting another text, she said.
APCO will ask the FCC to refrain from implementing any time mandates at this point, dictating when PSAPs must accept texts, McMahon said. APCO is not in favor of forcing any PSAP to take text calls to 911 if they feel they can’t handle it, she said. “That being said, we can’t ignore it for the next 10, 15 or 20 years. We've really got to start moving in a positive direction on that.”