FCC Wireless Location Accuracy Rules Moving Closer to Proposed Road Map
Carriers appear to be winning the fight to turn back parts of a proposal by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler on rules for improving indoor wireless 911 location accuracy, in favor of an order closer to the industry public safety road map, FCC officials said Tuesday. Eighth-floor staff is writing a new draft of the rules, to be voted at the FCC's Thursday meeting. The draft was expected late Tuesday.
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Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel raised some objections to the rules proposed by Wheeler, in favor of an approach closer to the road map, officials said. The FCC’s two Republicans, Ajit Pai and Mike O’Rielly, also have concerns about the Wheeler proposal and, as a result, Wheeler didn't have the votes for approval and has had to seek middle ground, the officials said.
APCO, AT&T, CTIA, the National Emergency Number Association, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon last year proposed a road map for improved indoor location accuracy, emphasizing that Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies make a dispatchable wireless address available where it wasn't in the past (see 1412150061). Carriers argue that the availability of a dispatchable address makes wireless more equivalent to wireline.
CTIA is making a late push to convince the FCC to approve the road map. CTIA said in a letter to the agency, posted Tuesday in docket 07-114, that the four major carriers behind the plan have agreed to additional stipulations to address FCC concerns. CTIA President Meredith Baker spoke Friday with all five commissioners about improving the performance metrics, the letter said.
Carriers have agreed to provide a location fix of within 50 meters or dispatchable location for 40 percent of all wireless 911 calls within two years, and for 60 percent of calls within five years, Baker said. “Signatory carriers consent to FCC codification of these performance metrics, in addition to performance metrics of 50 percent of all wireless 9-1-1 calls within three years and 80 percent of all wireless 9-1-1 calls within six years,” she said.
The four carriers also agreed to deliver “uncompensated barometric pressure sensor data” to public safety answering points “from compatible handsets that support such a delivery capability” within three years, Baker noted. The road map had called for a study of how helpful the sensors would be to public safety in determining the relative altitude of a caller.
​The FCC does seem to be moving in the direction of approving rules based on the road map, said a wireless lawyer who has been in meetings at the FCC on the issue. “We found a lot of support for the road map” in Democratic and Republican offices, the lawyer said.
“If the carriers are turning the rules towards the roadmap, then they do win, accountability will end up on the floor and the safety of the public will suffer,” said Jamie Barnett, Venable lawyer and former chief of the FCC Public Safety Bureau. Barnett represents the Find Me 911 coalition, which opposes the road map. The FCC’s focus should be on saving lives, not cash, he told us, noting that the rules have been a key focus for Wheeler. “I have a hard time believing he would compromise to the point of making meaningless rules,” Barnett said. “Whatever the commission ultimately votes on, if it doesn’t have any binding indoor requirements or testing, the commission would be endorsing the status quo and repudiating the dozens of public safety organizations that have told the FCC that they need that mandatory indoor standard to save lives.”
NextNav, which opposes the road map, argued in a filing the FCC should stick with the proposal to make use of a “blended metric” taking in all calls to E-911 and a second metric for location fixes resulting from non-satellite-based technologies, for indoor calls. “Although a non-satellite location metric may not map perfectly with indoor calling, it closely correlates in dense urban and urban areas,” the company said. “More importantly, such a metric clearly documents the very difficult indoor location environments where E911 dispatchers currently receive no location fix (or an inaccurate fix) for emergency calls from wireless phones.”
T-Mobile Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray and others from the carrier were at the FCC Friday to explain the company’s support for the road map, said a T-Mobile filing. Ray met with Daniel Alvarez, public safety aide to the chairman, Phil Verveer, senior counsel to Wheeler, and David Simpson, chief of the Public Safety Bureau, T-Mobile said. “Specifically, T-Mobile explained that the Roadmap represents a paradigm shift in approaching 911 location accuracy, leveraging commercial Location Based Services, including ongoing improvements to such technologies, to provide what Public Safety and the Commission have stated is the gold standard, a dispatchable location for wireless E911 calls.”
Competitive Carriers Association President Steve Berry said in a news release Monday the FCC should also look closely at an alternative for smaller carriers that need to comply with the rule. “CCA’s Parallel Path is a logical complement to the Roadmap and offers realistic benchmarks for smaller carriers to meet location accuracy standards,” Berry said. “Non-nationwide carriers have unique challenges, and I strongly encourage the Commission to consider CCA’s proposed Parallel Path, which directly addresses smaller carrier needs.”