Backers of federal funding for next-generation 911 tech upgrades told us they remain hopeful that lawmakers will reach an agreement on a spectrum title in a budget reconciliation measure that allocates some revenue from future FCC sales to those projects. GOP leaders have been pushing to reserve that money entirely as an offset for tax cuts initially enacted during the first Trump administration (see 2502190068). Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz of Texas and other Republicans are emphasizing auction proceeds as a reconciliation funding source after repeatedly opposing several spectrum packages during the last Congress that used the potential money to pay for a range of telecom projects (see 2308100058).

Emergency 911 networks appear largely to have withstood the powerful Hurricane Helene, officials said Friday. Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane Thursday at 11 p.m. in Taylor County, part of Florida’s Big Bend region, with maximum sustained winds of 140 miles per hour, the office of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Friday. After preparing for the massive storm (see 2409250048), telecom companies reported some damage to network infrastructure and said they are responding to problems that flooding and power outages caused.

The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials and National Emergency Number Association want Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, GOP nominee ex-President Donald Trump and their running mates to make support for funding next-generation 911 tech upgrades “a central tenet” of their campaign platforms. Talks between lawmakers aimed at reaching a deal on a spectrum legislative package that would fund NG-911 and other telecom projects remain stalled (see 2408150039). “Enactment of NG9-1-1 funding legislation will provide the more than 100,000 9-1-1 professionals across the country with improved situational awareness, resulting in a faster and more efficient response for the members of the public they protect,” NENA CEO Brian Fontes and APCO CEO Mel Maier said in letters to Harris, Trump, GOP vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance of Ohio and Harris' running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D). “NG9-1-1 will begin saving lives the moment it is implemented. Achieving NG9-1-1 is also a national security imperative, as it will lead to enhanced response to natural and man-made disasters, protection against cyberattacks including state-sponsored attacks, and support for homeland defense efforts in the event of a national emergency.”

The government should classify public safety telecommunicators (PSTs) and dispatchers as in a protective service occupation, “the same as police officers and other public safety professionals,” and avoid putting PSTs in the same occupational classification as secretaries and office clerks, the National Emergency Number Association said in comments filed Monday with the Office of Management and Budget. NENA said the job of dispatchers has changed markedly in the past 50 years. “Unlike commercial dispatchers, PSTs have constant direct contact with callers experiencing stressful and even traumatic events,” the group said in docket BLS-2024-001. “It is not uncommon for PSTs to hear an officer’s screams ... to hear the shot when a caller commits suicide, or to calm a frantic mother while coaching her to stop the massive bleeding of an injured child,” NENA said: “These frequent traumatic contacts require a different skill set, a different mindset, and a fundamentally different stress management regime than that required to dispatch commercial transportation vehicles.”

Don't expect big changes in the next-generation 911 draft order that's set for a vote during the FCC commissioners' open meeting Thursday, a 10th-floor official tells us. While the order should help facilitate the NG911 transition, a quicker route would come if Congress found the roughly $15 billion that states and localities likely need for deployment, said Jonathan Gilad, National Emergency Number Association (NENA) government affairs director. Minus federal funding, "it will always be a haves and have-nots situation," with some localities and states more financially able than others to afford the transition, he said. The FCC said the order is aimed at accelerating the NG911 rollout (see 2406270068).

The House Education and Workforce Committee advanced an amended version of the Supporting Accurate Views of Emergency Services (911 Saves) Act (HR-6319), drawing criticism from the National Emergency Number Association and APCO. HR-6319 and the similar Enhancing First Response Act (S-3556) would reclassify public safety call takers and dispatchers as a protective service. A substitute amendment from Rep. Lori Chavez-Deremer, R-Ore., requires the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics “consider establishing a separate code for public safety telecommunicators as a subset of protective service occupations” instead of mandating the reclassification. House Education also approved by voice vote an amendment from ranking member David Scott, D-Va., to extend the timeline for BLS to report back on considering the reclassification from 30 days to 60. NENA and APCO are “disappointed that this version of [HR-6319] strays from the language of previous iterations” by not mandating the proposed reclassification, the groups said in a joint statement. They “commend the comments from [House Education] members expressing support for 9-1-1 professionals' service to our communities. We look forward to working with” lawmakers “to ensure that 9-1-1 professionals are recognized for the highly skilled, specialized, life-saving work they do every day.”

The National Emergency Number Association told the FCC its members have been overwhelmed by the number of notifications they are receiving under new reporting rules (see 2401250015). NENA representatives met with staff from the Public Safety Bureau, said a filing posted Monday in docket 18-89. “The volume of notifications makes the notification process unhelpful … as there are too many notifications" for public safety answering points "to make meaningful operational decisions for notifications that may or may not apply to them,” NENA said: “Notifications may cover all PSAPs for a very large area, such as multiple states, without geospatial or other information to communicate the exact scope of the notification or whether the PSAP should act on it.”

The FCC "has already begun investigating the 911 multistate outages that occurred [Wednesday] night to get to the bottom of the cause and impact," Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement Thursday. Authorities in affected states are asking questions, too. At least four states -- Texas, Nebraska, Nevada and South Dakota -- experienced 911 calling problems, said state officials and news reports.

A Thursday Senate Commerce Committee hearing is likely to highlight stark differences between panel leaders’ competing proposals for a spectrum legislative package, including whether it should mandate sales of specific bands before NTIA completes studies of those frequencies in keeping with the Biden administration’s national spectrum strategy (see 2403120006). Lawmakers’ apparent failure to reach a deal allocating additional money for the FCC’s affordable connectivity program and Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program (see 2403190062) as part of a FY 2024 still-unreleased “minibus” spending package also ratchets up the pressure for a spectrum bill to use future auction revenue to pay for multiple telecom priorities, officials and lobbyists told us.

George Kelemen, Industry Council for Emergency Response Technologies executive director, advised National Emergency Number Association members Monday to distinguish between the general push for Congress to appropriate $15 billion for next-generation 911 tech upgrades and existing legislative vehicles for allocating that funding when they meet this week with Capitol Hill offices. Backers of the House Commerce Committee-cleared Spectrum Auction Reauthorization Act (HR-3565), which would use some future auction proceeds to pay up to $14.8 billion for NG-911, haven't advanced the measure amid stalled negotiations on a broader spectrum legislative package (see 2312280044). Some offices, particularly Senate Republicans, are likely to say HR-3565 “‘is dead,’ and as a legislative vehicle it may very well be dead,” Kelemen said during NENA’s conference in Pentagon City, Virginia. “It’s still technically … a live bill,” and the hope is that lawmakers will “take all of the important parts of” the bill dealing with NG-911 and put them in "a different vehicle sometime this year and let’s hope they get it all done.” The NG-911 language in HR-3565, which mirrors an aborted spectrum legislative deal leaders of the House and Senate Commerce committees agreed to in December 2022 (see 2212190069), is “what we’re looking for and that’s what we’d like to see in whatever vehicle eventually moves,” Kelemen said. NENA members will also lobby lawmakers’ offices on the 911 Supporting Accurate Views of Emergency Services Act (HR-6319) and similar Enhancing First Response Act (S-3556), both of which would reclassify public safety call-takers and dispatchers as a protective service.