The FCC should impose a relatively early deadline on all interconnected text message providers to send bounce-back messages to their customers when text-to-911 isn’t available, not just the nation’s four biggest carriers, AT&T said in comments filed at the FCC. The National Emergency Number Association said the deadline for all should be “generous, but firm.” Under an agreement last year with the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials and NENA, the top four providers said they would implement systems for transmitting bounce-back messages by June 30. T-Mobile warned that meeting the deadline won’t be easy.

T-Mobile and Sprint Nextel told the FCC in separate reply comments some kind of local or regional coordination is necessary for public safety answering points (PSAPs) to ensure a smooth transition to a next-generation 911 world. The National Emergency Number Association (NENA), meanwhile, offered some basic principles for an NG911 transition. Reply comments on a Nov. 13 public notice by the FCC’s Public Safety Bureau were due at the FCC Monday. Industry groups filed initial comments last month (CD Dec 17 p7).

The FCC should rely on a “cooperative, standards-based approach” in developing rules for the deployment of a next-generation 911 network, Verizon and Verizon Wireless said in comments filed at the FCC. The National Emergency Number Association (NENA) said rollout of a successful NG911 network will require “action at every level of government.” In November, the FCC Public Safety Bureau sought comments on a legal framework for NG911 (http://fcc.us/W6u2m7).

Next-generation 911 will take significant, costly and long investments of time and money before the system can work, National Emergency Number Association (NENA) officials said at a Thursday USTelecom briefing. The future will spell change for regulations and the number and arrangement of 911 centers, the officials said. The U.S. “must address” NG-911 if the public switched telephone network will be sunsetted in the next few years, said NENA CEO Brian Fontes, citing the FCC’s recent push on text-to-911 and this week’s FCC Technological Advisory Council report (CD Dec 11 p2). Fontes asked USTelecom members to engage with NENA.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski unveiled an agreement with the four major national carriers to “accelerate” their ability to transmit emergency text messages to 911 call centers. The National Emergency Number Association (NENA) and the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) also signed the agreement. Industry and government officials conceded Friday much remains to be done to make widespread text-to-911 a reality.

The FCC will hold field hearings to scrutinize communications resiliency in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, Chairman Julius Genachowski announced. The storm hit the East Coast starting Oct. 29 and knocked out a quarter of the cell sites in affected areas, with outages lingering long after. The hearings will begin in early 2013, starting in New York, and focus on access to 911, how resources are shared, emergency permitting and dependency on electric power and fuel, the FCC said. The agency will look at wired and wireless resiliency and produce recommendations for a stronger network, it said. Questions of new technology and jurisdictional tension remain concerns, officials told us.

The National Emergency Number Association launched a new 911 center registration website Thursday, it said (http://xrl.us/bnzto3). The new database will come with “increased functionality and improved performance” and is the result of a partnership with Digital Data Technologies, NENA said. The new website comes with better search functions, easier login, “streamlined” registration, status updates on any 911 center change requests and automated password resets, it said. Users of the registry system will be sent a prompt requesting the creation of a new username and password Thursday, it said.

The National Emergency Number Association seeks submissions of less than 20 pages each on issues related to local, state and federal governance. Sample topics include “effectively conveying issues to decision makers, enabling NG9-1-1 through regulatory review, public safety funding opportunities, and restructuring of local/region/state planning, acquisition, and ongoing management of NG9-1-1 services to better enable economic and operational effectiveness,” NENA said Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bnzotc). Submissions are due Dec. 17, it said, saying they should follow American Psychological Association-backed formatting style and can be submitted electronically.

The National Emergency Number Association released its standard document on “civic location” data for next-generation 911 providers for a second round of comments starting Monday, NENA said Saturday. The standards apply to location data that will be critical for routing, dispatch and mapping services of NG-911, it said. The document, which will define “the civic location data elements that will be used to support the NENA compliant Next Generation systems, databases, call routing, call handling, and related processes,” first received comments starting Sept. 5, but various factors demand more time for response, NENA said (http://xrl.us/bnp6re). “Due to the number of comments previously received and the quantity of edits and clarification that have been made to this document, it is being released for a 2nd round of public review and comments with only the edits shown being subject to review,” NENA said when releasing the new document. The new comment period ends Oct. 5. The document’s intended to be an “information source for the designers, manufacturers, administrators and operators of systems to be utilized for the purpose of processing emergency calls,” the standard document draft said (http://xrl.us/bnp6rp). It’s part of a larger series of NG-911 standards in development, the organization said.

Next-generation 911 is moving forward as text-to-911 trials continue and authorities reconsider old regulation, panelists at an FCBA emergency communications session said Wednesday night. They looked at the virtues and shortfalls of text-to-911 and considered the broader regulatory challenges 911 providers face, such as in interconnection agreements.