Carriers appear to be winning the fight to turn back parts of a proposal by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler on rules for improving indoor wireless 911 location accuracy, in favor of an order closer to the industry public safety road map, FCC officials said Tuesday. Eighth-floor staff is writing a new draft of the rules, to be voted at the FCC's Thursday meeting. The draft was expected late Tuesday.

CTIA asked the FCC to reject arguments that the agency should effectively exclude all emergency calls that are satellite-based from being counted as indoor calls as the agency develops metrics for measuring the ability of carriers to identify the location of indoor wireless calls to 911. Industry officials view that as one of the key policy decisions that the FCC will make when it approves rules, to be voted on at Thursday’s commission meeting (see 1501130062).

Officials with SouthernLINC Wireless raised concerns about provisions it understands are in the FCC’s proposed rules for wireless location accuracy on calls made indoors, during a series of eighth-floor meetings, said a filing posted by Friday in docket 07-114. The FCC is to vote on rules Thursday (see 1501130062). SouthernLINC's understanding is the rules include “new location accuracy requirements for both horizontal (x/y-axis) and vertical (z-axis) location information that would exclude any location information or measurements obtained through the use of satellite-assisted technologies,” the carrier said. “The rationale for excluding satellite-generated measurements is to create a proxy for ‘indoor-only’ 9-1-1 calls, based on the assumption that satellite-assisted technologies are unable to provide location information for wireless 9-1-1 calls made from indoor locations.” Both provisions raise “significant concerns,” the carrier said. T-Mobile also raised concerns about the order. In a letter to the agency, T-Mobile encouraged the agency to develop reasonable standards. Establishing compliance metrics for indoor wireless calls has long been an FCC goal, T-Mobile said. “But that task has been stymied by the difficulty of measuring indoor compliance,” it said. “For instance, it has long been clear that widespread local-level compliance testing, of the kind used for outdoor location accuracy compliance, is simply not feasible for indoor location assessment.” In a third filing posted Friday, New America’s Open Technology Institute reported on various meetings at the FCC to discuss privacy concerns raised by the proposed requirements. “It is critical for the Commission to address privacy concerns associated with E911 at this stage, before the technology is developed and deployed,” the group said.

As Commissioner Ajit Pai said the largest U.S. hotel chains have made progress on ensuring guests can call 911 without first dialing 9, he also criticized the lack of FCC action in dealing with the problem at its own offices. Speaking at a news conference Friday at the Marshall, Texas, police headquarters, Pai said Commissioner Mike O’Rielly discovered “something disturbing” last year. When callers using the agency’s phone system try to call 911 directly, they receive a message saying, “'Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please consult your directory and call again or ask your operator for assistance. This is a recording.'” The message should have an additional line, Pai said: “This is completely unacceptable.”

The FCC established a pleading cycle on TeleGuam’s proposed buy of an upper 700 MHz C-block license and two AWS-1 licenses from Club 42. The licenses cover two cellular market areas (CMAs) -- Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. “Our preliminary review indicates that TeleGuam would be assigned 42 to 62 megahertz of spectrum in five counties in these two CMAs,” the FCC said. “Post-transaction, TeleGuam would hold 82 to 97 megahertz of spectrum in total, including 47 megahertz of below-1-GHz spectrum” in Guam. Petitions to deny are due Feb. 20, oppositions March 2 and replies March 9.

The FCC received thousands of emails seeking tough indoor location accuracy rules for wireless, the Public Safety Bureau said in a notice posted in docket 07-114. The notice said the agency received 9,297 emails from last July to October urging a “reasonable and achievable two-year path to indoor location accuracy for wireless 9-1-1 calls.” The communications came after the FCC proposed rules in February (see 1402210038). More emails came in after APCO, AT&T, CTIA, the National Emergency Number Association, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon proposed a road map for location accuracy in November (see 1411190064), the bureau said. So far in January, the commission has received more than 1,000 emails with essentially the same message, the bureau said. “I am writing to urge you to oppose the phone companies' attempt to delay real and enforceable requirements for accurate 9-1-1 locations,” reads a typical email, according to the bureau. “The technology exists today to find all wireless 911 callers, so we should require phone companies to find the location of indoor and outdoor callers within the next two years, as your original rule proposed.” Two emails, meanwhile, urged the FCC to “accept the deal,” the bureau said. The agency is to vote on rules at its Jan. 29 meeting. Meanwhile, the four national carriers supporting the road map filed a letter at the FCC offering additional concessions. Their modified version of the road map adopts “new, quantifiable indoor-specific metrics to assure widespread wireless 9-1-1 indoor positioning fixes, including vertical location fixes,” expands the performance metrics to apply to all 911 calls, and commits to creation of a National Emergency Address Database Privacy and Security Plan to be developed and sent to the FCC, they said. “The amended Roadmap commits carriers to widespread implementation of solutions that either provide a dispatchable location or a z-axis component, or both, to assure the availability of accurate horizontal and vertical location information for indoor calls,” the carriers said. “With these commitments, there can be no doubt the Roadmap provides clear targets and accountability for indoor location through aggressive performance metrics verified by live call data and an open and transparent test bed.”

The FCC is on the right track as it moves forward on new location accuracy rules for wireless calls made indoors, said Thera Bradshaw, executive director of Hawaii’s Enhanced 9-1-1 Board, in an email. Bradshaw said she has been a public safety official for more than 30 years and supports Chairman Tom Wheeler’s approach on location accuracy (see 1501130062). “I welcome the opportunity to work with a proactive FCC that is really passionate about tackling location accuracy in order to find people when they need help,” she said. “This Wheeler led FCC is doing just that in their efforts to produce meaningful accurate indoor and outdoor location to achieve a dispatchable address. By putting aside efforts to establish blame and staying the course, bringing all stakeholders into the discussion, the Commission will succeed in attaining the goal of an accurate location when people call 911, sooner rather than later.”

South Dakota’s state government gave TeleCommunication Systems (TCS) a $16.4 million contract to provide the state’s Next-Generation 911 (NG911) services over the next five years, TCS said Thursday. TCS will provide end-to-end support for the state’s 29 public safety answering points through the contract under the South Dakota 911 Coordination Board’s supervision. TCS said it will support text-to-911 capability statewide via carriers that interconnect with the company’s Text Control Center. “Our goal is consistent with the goal of the South Dakota 911 Coordination Board: to protect South Dakota residents by equipping PSAPs with the right technology and tools to quickly and efficiently respond to 9-1-1 calls,” Lynne Seitz, TCS senior vice president-Safety & Security Group, said in a news release.

The industry road map for ensuring indoor location accuracy for wireless calls to 911 has gathered wide support and the FCC should move quickly to incorporate key provisions into its rules, CTIA said in a filing at the commission. The four major carriers, APCO and the National Emergency Number Association proposed the plan last month. “Public safety representatives and agencies from across the country eager for dispatchable location,” technology companies, members of the accessibility community and the “national carriers and wireless associations including those that represent small carriers” all support the plan, CTIA said in reply comments filed in docket 07-114, posted by the FCC Wednesday. “The Roadmap is a concrete, carefully-negotiated and -balanced solution to help deliver new and better E911 location accuracy,” CTIA said. “To be clear, however, the Roadmap is intended to function as an alternative -- not a supplement -- to the proposed standards and timetables in the Commission’s NPRM.” TruePosition, which offers an alternative solution for indoor location accuracy, however, said it's hardly a “consensus” plan. It's “opposed by the vast majority of public safety officials who have participated in this proceeding” and “there is scant evidence that the Plan would actually work,” TruePosition said. The carriers just want to “postpone fixing” a problem they caused to begin with, the company said: “The premise of the Roadmap is that if the FCC will simply leave the carriers alone they will someday fix the problem of poor indoor location capabilities for emergency 911 calls.” Officials with Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing reported on a meeting at the FCC. The FCC should look at the road map and other solutions, advocates for the group said. “We want the same capacity we had when we had the landline phones,” the officials said. “During those days, all we had to do was to dial 9-1-1, and help would come, with much success. When we call for an emergency, the first objective is for the dispatcher to get our call, and immediately know where the call came from. Then the dispatcher can send police, fire, or paramedics to the scene of the emergency.” “The Roadmap outlines a clear path to delivering first responders the necessary ‘dispatchable location’ information in an accelerated timeframe,” PCIA said in its reply comments. The plan also “leverages technologies that have been proven successful in commercial location services,” like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, “rather than proprietary technologies without a commercial track record,” the group said. The road map was “the result of tough negotiations between APCO and NENA, on the one hand, and the Carrier Signatories, on the other,” AT&T told the FCC. APCO acknowledged the complaints of some 20 public safety commenters left out of negotiations on the road map. “Since finalizing the Roadmap, APCO has reached out extensively, and will continue to do so, to describe the Roadmap to all interested stakeholders and respond to any questions,” the group said. “Further, APCO welcomes the active assistance of these groups to implement the Roadmap’s solutions to this complex problem.”

The Computer & Communications Industry Association endorsed the industry road map for ensuring indoor location accuracy for wireless calls to 911, released last month by the four major carriers, APCO and the National Emergency Number Association, in reply comments filed at the FCC. But as in the earlier comment round (see 1411180051), many first responders expressed concern about the plan. Replies are due Wednesday at the FCC in docket 07-114. The FCC proposed rules in a February NPRM (see 1402210038).