ATIS, TIA

Text-to-911 Moves Closer to Rollout as Standard Approved

April 3, 2013 by Howard Buskirk|Top News

"It’s really just a set of high-level requirements,” said a carrier official. “In order to implement something consistent that supports all of the [public safety answering points] and all of the different carriers we normally work from an industry standard.”

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The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) and the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) agreed to a standard for texting to 911, using SMS, the groups said Tuesday. The release of a standard was key to carriers meeting a commitment made last December to make their networks capable of transmitting texts to 911 call centers by May 15, 2014 (CD Dec 10 p1), industry officials said. Text-to-911 has been a key demand of advocates for the deaf and hard of hearing who otherwise have difficulty calling 911 for help.

The new standard is labeled J-STD-110, Joint ATIS/TIA Native SMS to 9-1-1 Requirements & Architecture Specification. “The purpose of this Standard is to define the requirements, architecture, and procedures for text messaging to 911 emergency services using native wireless operator SMS capabilities for the existing generation and next generation Public Safety Answering Points,” the document says.

"Text messaging is one of consumers’ preferred means of communication and increasingly they are expecting that they can access life-saving emergency services using SMS,” said ATIS President Susan Miller. “Thus, market demand has helped drive the need for this critical standard."

The standard reflects a broad industry consensus, said TIA President Grant Seiffert. “In the short-term, the standard will enable life-saving communications between those in situations where voice conversations are not possible, and will augment the deaf and hard of hearing community’s ability to communicate with emergency services in a timely fashion,” he said. “In the long-term, this standard will serve as a bridge to a future next generation 911 service that will see numerous benefits for the public."

"Sprint supports the standards work and looks forward to implementing text to 9-1-1 consistent with our earlier announcement that we would deploy an interim solution,” a spokesman for the carrier said.