Wireless Industry Generally Lines Up Against Public Safety on 911 Calls From Retired Handsets

PSAPs should address these prank calls through call blocking within their own networks or customer-premises equipment, CTIA said. Sunsetting the requirement “would generate uncertainty and confusion for wireless callers, including subscribers whose handsets temporarily register as NSI in certain circumstances,” the wireless association said. “Ultimately, a sunset would not achieve the Commission’s goals of eliminating fraudulent calls to 9-1-1 from NSI handsets while ensuring access to 9-1-1 from all service-initialized handsets.” Some still rely on NSI phones to call 911, CTIA said. For example, as one commenter observed, these phones are often carried by the “most vulnerable members of our society such as battered women who leave an abusive partner and have little or no money and are given an NSI phone by a shelter,” the association said.

The Competitive Carriers Association said sunsetting the rules could ultimately result in legitimate calls to 911 failing to go through. CCA said in many cases its members have been unable to negotiate roaming agreements with Verizon and AT&T. “In instances where roaming agreements are not in place, wireless 911 calls appear as though they are from NSI devices,” CCA said. This “puts competitive carriers and their subscribers at a severe disadvantage.”

Verizon said rather than imposing changes now, the FCC should ask its Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council to look more closely at the ramifications. “Many users of NSI handsets call 911 in legitimate emergencies, and blocking those calls risks preventing a significant number of those legitimate 911 calls from reaching PSAPs,” Verizon said.

But public safety groups urged the FCC to address the NSI mandate. “The primary rationale for the adoption of this rule nearly 20 years ago, to expedite wireless calls to 9-1-1 that had been subject to lengthy call validation processes for unidentified callers, is no longer as relevant, if at all,” APCO said. PSAPs face multiple problems from NSI phones, the group said. These include accidental calls, hang ups, false reports of emergencies, harassing calls and other intentional nonemergency calls, APCO said. “While the FCC, over the years, has taken positive steps to help reduce nonemergency calls placed by NSI handsets, abusive calls remain such a continuing and severe problem that the harm outweighs remaining benefits of the present rule. Additionally, the NSI rule has led to significant abuses of the 9-1-1 system while the wireless industry has evolved to offer low-cost alternatives for wireless services.”

“The volume of data indicating that NSI calling is detrimental to public safety is overwhelming,” the National Emergency Number Association said. Local governments have provided the FCC with real-world information about why NSI calls are a problem, NENA said. “While a few filings indicate that a tiny fraction of calls from NSI devices have been indicative of actual emergencies, the record clearly demonstrates that, on balance, NSI calling does more harm than good,” the group said.

AT&T sided with public safety. “If the public safety community has determined that the cost of continuing the All Calls Rule outweighs any benefit and it recommends that the Commission sunset this rule,” AT&T said, it supports that decision. But AT&T also said the commission should drop the requirement for all NSI devices and networks to minimize consumer confusion. “Moreover, AT&T’s incremental cost of sunsetting this requirement across all of its networks, versus sunsetting the All Calls Rule only on its legacy networks, is de minimis,” the carrier said.