A plan released last month by the four major carriers, APCO and the National Emergency Number Association, on a road map for ensuring indoor location accuracy for calls to 911, got mixed reviews. Public safety and state groups commented to the FCC that it should stay the course on its earlier proposal for indoor location accuracy.

Proponents of an industry road map for improving location accuracy for wireless calls made indoors explained details of the proposal at a meeting at the FCC, said an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 07-114. The plan was unveiled last month by AT&T, APCO, CTIA, the National Emergency Number Association, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon (see 1411190064). The meeting focused on the “formation of a test bed, dispatchable location commitments, improvements in and deployments of horizontal location technologies, steps to advance vertical location technologies providing back-up solutions for indoor calls, and metrics and deliverables,” the filing said. The industry representatives met with officials from the FCC's Disability Rights Office and the Public Safety Bureau, the filing said. AARP said in a filing that the agency should move forward on its own proposal for location accuracy rules laid out in a February NPRM (see 1402210038). "The carriers’ agreement does not provide accountability or assurance that its plan would be effective," AARP said. "The FCC’s proposed rules provide specific, fair and measurable requirements for indoor location accuracy." AT&T fired a shot at the Find Me 911 coalition and TruePosition over their arguments against the road map. “TruePosition and its fully-controlled FindMe911 coalition is at it again, spreading misinformation and ill-informed criticisms of the APCO, NENA [National Emergency Number Association], and Wireless Industry Roadmap for Improving Location Accuracy,” said Joe Marx, assistant vice president-federal regulatory, in a blog post Friday. He countered arguments that the industry proposal is based on untested technologies. “Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies have been in use for years in commercial location services, and are central to the current wireless ecosystem in ways that will drive strong incentives for further innovation and lasting relevance for years to come,” he said. “The phone companies seem to think if they repeat what is not true often enough, people will ignore the actual wording of the plan they proposed,” said Jamie Barnett, lawyer at Venable who represents the coalition. “Here is what is absolutely true: before the roadmap, the phone companies were against the FCC’s proposed rules because it would hold them accountable. Now they are for the roadmap because it will allow the phone companies to escape accountability for location accuracy. No one should be fooled by this Trojan Horse.” The road map does propose use of untested technologies, relying on creation of a "National Emergency Address Database,” he said. “Instead of enforceable and concrete benchmarks to locate callers, the phone company plan is based on process-oriented steps like ‘tests,’ ‘demonstrations,’ and ‘studies,’ coupled with nice-sounding goals for the deployment of specific, minimal-cost handset technologies that have failed in the past to provide accurate indoor locations.”

Ex-FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett sharply criticized a proposed road map for ensuring indoor location accuracy for calls to 911, during a webinar Monday on behalf of the Find Me 911 Coalition. The plan was unveiled last month by APCO, AT&T, National Emergency Number Association, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon (see 1411190064). The industry road map offers the best path to a relatively quick solution, said Steve Sharkey, T-Mobile senior director, Monday in a blog post.

A plan to implement and deploy improved location accuracy capability for 911 calls features a test bed, milestones based on live wireless 911 call data, and reporting metrics for live calls. The plan, released Tuesday evening, was drafted by AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, and the public safety entities APCO and the National Emergency Number Association. The parties said the plan proposes to allow first responders to have a “dispatchable” location through the availability of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies (see 1411170045).

SAN FRANCISCO -- State agencies are working to address vulnerabilities in Next-Generation 911 (NG-911) and text-to-911 even as they advance deployment of the technologies, state officials said Tuesday. The April 2014 multi-state 911 outage is the latest example of the “accelerating” trend of 911 outages caused by increasingly advanced 911 technologies, said FCC Public Safety Bureau Deputy Chief David Furth during a panel discussion at a NARUC conference. The Bureau released a report in October that found a “preventable software error” at a 911 call processing center in Englewood, Colorado, was responsible for the outage (see 1410170057).

The largest wireless companies teamed with public safety groups on an agreement to improve 911 location accuracy indoors. The goal is for first responders to have access to a “dispatchable location” through the availability of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies, AT&T, the National Emergency Number Association (NENA), Sprint and others said in a news release on CTIA's website. The agreement was supported by CTIA and FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, but criticized by groups representing state and local emergency bodies and first responders, including the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

The current version of text-to-911, which is based on SMS, has to be viewed as only a “down payment” on what is possible, David Furth, deputy chief of the FCC Public Safety Bureau, said Friday at the agency's Accessible Wireless Emergency Communications Forum at FCC headquarters. A National Emergency Number Association official said public safety answering points still need a push to make PSAP systems text ready.

APCO and the National Emergency Number Association urged the FCC to require that texts to 911 contain information allowing 911 call centers to locate the sender, as soon as practical. But both public safety groups also recognized in filings that short message service (SMS) texts are not the wave of the future and cautioned that the FCC should make allowances for the development of next-generation 911 networks.

Concerns raised by rival Neustar about naming Telcordia the next Local Number Portability Administrator (LPNA) have already been addressed, Telcordia said in its final reply comments. To the extent that issues like Telcordia’s ability to stay neutral, protect the security of the network from intrusion and work effectively with law enforcement agencies remain unaddressed, they can be dealt with after the FCC formally awards it the contract, said Telcordia’s filing (http://bit.ly/1vGSFny), posted on Monday.

The FCC should ensure that tools and applications for the timely and economical management of 911 data currently in use remain available to 911 providers at no cost, and that any transition to a new LNPA (see separate report above) must not be allowed to adversely affect 911 data management, the National Emergency Number Association, also known as NENA: The 9-1-1 Association, said in reply comments (http://bit.ly/1AEYa96) Friday, posted to docket 09-109. To the extent LNPA candidates have not been asked about their ability to maintain number portability services 911 providers rely on, the FCC should consider amending the request for proposals to require confirmation that these critical services will continue to be available, the association said.