Text-to-911 Order Takes Baby Step Aimed Just at Carriers
A proposed FCC item on texting to 911 imposes requirements aimed only at wireless carriers and puts off any decision on texts from over-the-top carriers, agency officials said this week. That aspect of a report and order and further notice of proposed rulemaking, teed up for a vote at the commission’s Dec. 12 meeting, is raising concerns at the commission and in industry. Industry and agency officials said many Americans now use one of more than a thousand over-the-top text messaging programs as an alternative to SMS offered by carriers.
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The FCC order only requires initially that within six months subscribers that try to send a text message using a carrier platform receive a bounce back message saying they should call 911 instead, agency officials say. But the order does not contain a similar requirement for high-tech companies that offer such messaging apps as WhatsApp, FaceBook messaging or Apple’s iMessage. The order also does not contain an implementation date by which carriers must make their own systems capable of transmitting emergency texts to 911 call centers. The further notice asks questions about over-the-top services, but the services don’t face the same initial mandate as carrier services.
"There’s a legitimate concern that the order has the best of intentions but it could end up confusing the public as to what will actually work,” said a government official Wednesday. “After the FCC votes in this order, will the general public think text to 911 is ready to go everywhere because it’s not, and we're far from that point? We don’t want to create inappropriate expectations as to what will actually work for consumers."
AT&T said in a recent ex parte filing an order that applies only to carrier platforms but not over-the-top services “may greatly confuse customers” on their ability to text to 911 (http://xrl.us/bn3w3f).
One industry official warned that the FCC could be creating a situation similar to one that confronted the FCC in 2005, when the commission imposed a requirement on interconnected VoIP providers that they too must ensure that their customers can make 911 calls. The FCC approved the order at a meeting at which it took emotional testimony from victims of VoIP-related 911 glitches (CD May 20/05 p1). The FCC wants to “issue a press release that says, ‘hey, we ordered text to 911,'” an industry lobbyist said Wednesday. “They realize that that’s going to create confusion because there’s no implementation date in the order and there’s no implementation date in the order because we don’t even have standards yet. ... We have to attack these things at the service level, not at the infrastructure level. You can’t point to the infrastructure guy and say ‘You're the one who’s going to have the obligation and only you’ because that’s not how consumers view these services anymore.”