Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Bill Nelson, D-Fla., is still drafting 911 legislation, which could carry out FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's next-generation 911 legislative goals. Nelson first mentioned he would craft a bill on the topic during a September FCC oversight hearing, promising an introduction “in the near future” but without any movement in the months that followed. Lawmakers adjourned earlier this month, but Nelson didn’t forget his pledge.

APCO, the National Emergency Number Association and National Association of State 911 Administrators jointly expressed concerns about a CTIA proposal for quarterly 911 live call reports by the carriers, due at the FCC starting in February. “CTIA included a proposed template for the reports and explanatory information regarding the carriers’ intent to exclude certain categories of 9-1-1 calls from consideration,” the public safety groups said. But the proposal wouldn't include some important calls to 911, the associations said. “APCO, NENA, and NASNA are particularly concerned that the carriers intend to exclude 9-1-1 calls made from roaming handsets and non-service initialized (NSI) devices,” said a filing in docket 07-114. Location accuracy rules, meanwhile, “make no exceptions when it comes to the collection and reporting of aggregate live 9-1-1 call location data,” the groups said. CTIA didn't comment Wednesday.

A large majority of Americans remain unable to text 911 for help in emergency situations, but some local authorities continue to question calls to support SMS at public safety answering points (PSAPs), 911 officials said in interviews. The National Emergency Number Association is frustrated the rollout isn’t going faster, said NENA Director-Government Affairs Trey Forgety. “If everyone made a decision that text-to-911 had to be implemented before the end of the year 2017, it could be done easily.” Localities are sympathetic to the need for text-to-911 but worry there's not a sufficient business model to move forward, said Fire Chief Don Crowson of Arlington, Texas. “We’re not resistant. We’re concerned.”

A single national system for 911 data could promote upgrades to next-generation 911, said public safety and emergency-number officials. Comments were due Wednesday on a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration request for information (docket NHTSA-2016-0069) about setting up a nationally uniform data system for 911 public safety answering point (PSAP) call data and local and state 911 system operations data (see 1607070008). Commenters said possible barriers to a national system are convincing software vendors to share data and locating enough funding.

Fake 911 calls to public safety answering points remain a major problem, said National Emergency Number Association officials in a meeting with FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief David Simpson and others from the bureau. The FCC sought comment last year on whether to drop a 1996 requirement that cellphones that are no longer in service must still be able to make calls to 911 (see 1504020047). The FCC refers to these nonconnected devices as non-service-initialized (NSI) phones. “NENA’s representatives reiterated the extreme importance of solving the NSI problem quickly, and urged the Bureau to work with carriers and other stakeholders to develop novel and viable solutions to this ongoing crisis,” said a filing in docket 08-51.

The District of Columbia is reviewing its processes after learning human error led to a 100-minute outage of the 911 system in the District of Columbia over the weekend. The outage initially was reported as an equipment failure (see 1608290027). Now, a D.C. Office of Unified Communications spokesman said officials have determined the failure was caused by a contractor hitting an emergency shutoff button. A National Emergency Number Association official said developing standards and best practices for 911 centers could prevent similar outages at other such centers.

The National Emergency Number Association said the transition from text telephone (TTY) to real-time text (RTT) technology is critical, but the FCC should take into account concerns of 911 call centers. NENA recommended a phased rollout to address public safety concerns. Industry'smajor concern has been that the FCC not micromanage how carriers deploy RTT, but NENA raised another matter (see 1607260020).

The NG911 NOW Coalition backed a comprehensive national plan for the deployment of next-generation 911. NG911’s stated goal is to retire legacy 911 systems by the end of 2020. The coalition also promised in the report Monday to provide a “high-level cost estimate” for deploying NG911 across the U.S. and to “secure additional funding for NG9-1-1 through federal legislation.” Coalition officials said they're developing a legislative strategy to better bring the message to Capitol Hill. The coalition is made up of the National Emergency Number Association, the National Association of State 911 Administrators (NASNA) and the Industry Council for Emergency Response Technologies (iCERT).

Top 911 associations are seeking to raise awareness about state 911 fee diversion, in which some states use 911 fees on consumer bills to pay for things not directly related. The FCC estimated diversion led to $223.4 million of 911 fee revenue going to other purposes in 2014. In Part I of this report, we found that the three states said to do the most diversion seemed unlikely to quit the practice soon (see 1605270020). In interviews last week, emergency response leaders said achieving 100 percent usage of 911 fees for 911 service is critical to maintaining emergency response service quality, adequately staffing 911 centers, and funding upgrades to Next-Generation 911 so people can send multimedia to emergency responders.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., pressed FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler on whether the agency played a role in the recent creation of the NG911 NOW Coalition and on how his office handles the potential discussion of nonpublic information with members of the news media and other officials. He sent the letter Friday and requested answers to several questions by April 4. The FCC received the letter and is reviewing it, said an agency spokesman, declining further comment.