Ensure PSAPs on Board with Text-to-911, EAAC Members Say
"I do know there are very many larger areas where the PSAPs are not ready to handle that,” said Chris Littlewood, project coordinator at the Allstate Center’s Center for Public Safety Innovation at the National Terrorism Preparedness Institute, of text-to-911. Education and outreach needs “to happen at the PSAP level as well,” he said. “I can tell you that it’s not just rural areas that have no idea that they need to be handling text-to-911 by the beginning of next year. … Are the PSAPs going to be able to handle that?” Different procedures will need to be in place at different levels of the 911 call centers, he said.
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Some PSAPs don’t understand the transition yet, said FCC Chief Technology Officer Henning Schulzrinne. They may see the texting as something that teenagers do and not realize its broader implications, such as for people with disabilities, he said. Local, one-on-one outreach will be crucial in “getting PSAPs involved and ready,” he said. Joel Ziev, director of Partners for Access, also pointed to this concern, saying many 911 call centers may not be ready to receive text messages for some time.
"We're in the process of figuring out what the exact timeline will be,” NENA’s Roger Hixson said of outreach to PSAPs. These centers should be able to receive texts via TTY even if not formally ready, he said, as the U.S. Department of Justice has called for. The initial planning documents will likely be ready to be sent to public safety officials by the end of July, he said. He showcased a planned list of milestones for what needs to be done at different points leading up to May 2014, the time set for nationwide text-to-911. He underscored the need for both broader general public education and “targeted efforts,” including for groups associated with disabilities and domestic violence organizations. Don’t underestimate the general public’s need for texting capabilities, though, cautioned Paul Michaelis of Avaya. He described a scenario in which train riders in San Francisco would benefit from texting during dangerous situations: “Nobody wants to pick up the phone and obviously be calling 911."
The FCC’s work is moving forward with its own questions, FCC Policy Analyst Tim May said. The pilot deployments are “imperative,” he added, describing Maine’s launch of one this month with Verizon Wireless and another in Collin County, Texas, set to begin “in a month or so.” The FCC is looking at several questions, he said: Should the FCC require all carriers and interconnected text services to provide text-to-911 service? What deadlines if any should apply? What technical and cost considerations should the FCC take into account?
Technology and standards challenges are evolving, committee members said. Schulzrinne talked about the advancement in location technology but said there “won’t be a single magic solution” to help find people indoors, saying different technologies have tradeoffs. The rise in mobility adds to this challenge, as more households go wireless-only and 70 percent of calls to 911 are mobile, he said. He acknowledged Progeny as one technology that may help in locating callers indoors.
Peter Musgrove, a principal member of AT&T’s technical staff, cited “significant progress to report” on standards, as the Joint ATIS/TIA Native SMS to 911 Requirements and Architecture Specification was published in March. A year earlier, there was chaos, with danger of text-to-911 turning into a regional service, he said.
The committee discussed what issues may be worth looking at in the future as well as lauded one another for EAAC’s accomplishments, given it was the group’s last meeting. “I think this group may morph into more than one continuation of this group,” said Ziev, referring to possible outreach to the elderly, those with disabilities and other ways to use the technologies discussed as part of EAAC. “I think the talent around the table is amazing.” One report looked at gaps in NENA i3 specifications, which dove into the need for specifications on how to avoid technical limitations of TTYs in next-generation 911. They also discussed two extra reports, one on procedures for calls between TTY users and NG911 PSAPs and another on proposed procedures for TTY as a text terminal in legacy PSAPs without IP connection. TTYs have “many functional limitations that make them cumbersome to use in modern communication environments,” according to that presentation.