Industry, Public Safety Trying To Reach Consensus on 911 Outage Rules, NENA Says

“We urge the Commission to consider an alternative, consensus proposal, should one be achieved by relevant stakeholders, and commit our Association to actively participating in the discussion of such proposals in advance of a final decision by the Commission,” NENA said. Public safety and industry have a “strong track record” of working together on similar issues, including rules for emergency texts to 911 and indoor location accuracy rules, NENA noted. The comments came in a response to a November NPRM aimed at curbing 911 outages.

The FCC should refrain from taking the two main steps proposed in the NPRM, CTIA said. The FCC should neither expand the definition of “covered 911 service providers” to include wireless carriers nor impose additional notification and certification requirements beyond current regulations, the group said. The October outage report “does not identify any issues stemming from mobile wireless providers’ role in 9-1-1,” CTIA told the FCC. Instead, the outage was the result of a coding error in software designed to keep track of the trunk assignment for 911 calls assigned to public safety answering points (PSAP) in the affected areas, the association said.

“The proposals in the Notice are premature and overly broad,” CTIA said. The FCC adopted its 2013 911 resiliency order “only 15 months ago, and it is just now being implemented with the first annual best practices certification due October 15, 2015,” CTIA said. That order “envisioned” that the FCC would first gain experience with its reliability rule before it looked to expand it, the association said. “Nonetheless, the Notice declares that 9-1-1 accountability must be addressed now as a result of the Bureau’s Multistate 9-1-1 Outage Report.” Section 20.18 of the commission’s rules impose “significant obligations to provide 9-1-1 service, with granular performance metrics, and Section 4.9 requires timely network outage reporting and notification that together result in meaningful accountability for reliable wireless 9-1-1 service,” CTIA said.

Verizon offered comments similar to CTIA's, saying the FCC should not impose new rules. Expanding the “subject matter and applicability” of the certification requirements would impose rules that are “prohibitively costly and complex to implement,” Verizon said. “Applying the rules to entities that do not directly provide services to PSAPs, such as subcontractors and agents, would be confusing and undermine accountability.”

“This proposed expansion of the rule and the intrusion into local and state governance of 911 systems is unwise, unnecessary, and, given the fact that the ink is barely dry on the new 911 Reliability Rules, premature,” AT&T said.

APCO urged the FCC to address gaps in its regulation but questioned the extent to which it has authority over PSAPs. Parts of the NPRM could be read as an assertion of FCC jurisdiction over PSAPs, the group said. “As the Commission has elsewhere acknowledged, FCC jurisdiction over state and local government operated PSAPs would be contrary to the fundamental separation of federal, state, and local government in our nation.” APCO said it supports expansion of the rules, to make clear that carriers are “responsible for the act of their agents and subcontractors with regard to their direct or indirect provision of 9-1-1 services.” Providers of 911 service also should have to notify PSAPs of “major” changes to their networks that could affect 911 service, APCO said. “Such information, if timely provided, would allow PSAPs adequate opportunity to modify operations (and in some cases replace equipment) to ensure seamless 9-1-1 service.”