The incentive auction the FCC plans will be critical for funding the billions of dollars required by FirstNet, said North American Number Association CEO Brian Fontes in a Wednesday op-ed for The Hill (http://bit.ly/1eiHv3x). “This is the best and perhaps only opportunity to raise the necessary funds for investment in a network we so desperately need,” he said. “We cannot settle for half-measures and incremental moves -- the FCC must take decisive steps and set up an auction that delivers the resources needed to empower our public safety officials.” Fontes backed an auction in which all bidders are allowed to participate. “A limited spectrum inventory will reduce funds generated from the auction, and jeopardize the future of FirstNet and funding for Next Generation 9-1-1,” he said.

Mignon Clyburn has been acting chairwoman of the FCC since May 20 and has had what most observers see as an active chairmanship. On Aug. 9, the commission approved on a 2-1 vote what Clyburn had made clear was a top priority -- an order addressing high rates for prison calling (CD Aug 12 p1), though the order has yet to be released three weeks later. The big question many FCC observers were asking last week is how much more Clyburn will try to take on, especially since it’s unclear how much longer she has as interim chair. Will her tenure be over shortly after the commission’s Sept. 26 meeting, or will she still be acting chairwoman in November? The scenarios require different approaches, FCC and industry officials agree.

The NG-911 Institute has “made a real difference as a clearinghouse,” FCC Public Safety Chief David Turetsky said Sunday at an institute reception in Anaheim during a meeting of the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials. The institute is a nonprofit that supports the Congressional NextGen 9-1-1 Caucus. Turetsky said, “911 has to be modernized.” APCO President Terry Hall described “the hard road ahead of us” in that transition, talking about the difficulty in bringing stakeholders together and in negotiating with Congress.

By a 2-1 vote, the FCC adopted an interim prison phone rate cap of 21 cents a minute for debit and pre-paid calls, and 25 cents a minute for collect calls -- reducing the cost of a 15-minute call from as much as $17 to less than $4. “A change has finally come,” said acting FCC Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn. Rates weren’t made as low as the petitioner sought, and the order had aroused controversy within the agency before it was adopted, with Commissioner Ajit Pai dissenting, as expected (CD Aug 9 p1).

Verizon’s proposal to replace wireline services on a portion of Fire Island, N.Y., with its Voice Link fixed wireless service concerns the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials, it said in comments Monday (http://bit.ly/12YtOfJ). “APCO’s principal concern in this regard is to ensure that all subscribers in the affected area have 9-1-1 service comparable to the wireline service being replaced,” it said. While it “takes no position” on Verizon’s specific request, APCO urged the commission to take into account the inferior level of reliability of wireless services compared to copper wireline services. They're susceptible to disruptions from extreme weather, and damage to a single cell site could “leave large numbers of customers stranded,” APCO said. “If the Commission grants Verizon’s request, it should require that Verizon take appropriate steps to increase the reliability of the wireless networks used for Voice Link communications in the impacted areas,” APCO said. For example, cell sites could be “hardened and equipped with substantial backup power,” additional cell sites added, and 911 calls be given priority, the association said.

The three-judge panel selected to hear Verizon’s appeal of the 2010 FCC net neutrality order (CD June 26 p1) could be a good panel from the agency’s perspective, but there are few certainties in appellate law, said attorneys following the case closely. While Republican-appointed judges outnumber by 9-5 those appointed by Democrats at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, two Democratic appointees, David Tatel and Judith Rogers, were selected for the panel, as was Laurence Silberman, widely viewed as the intellectual leader of the conservative appellant movement.

The four national wireless carriers are on target to make text-to-911 messages available to all public safety answering points capable or receiving them by a May 15, 2014, deadline, they said in reports filed this week at the National Emergency Number Association. That deadline stems from a voluntary agreement Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile signed with NENA and the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials last year, under FCC pressure (CD Dec 10 p1). All four carriers said they're already transmitting bounceback messages to subscribers who try to send emergency texts before 911 call centers can handle them.

CEA President Gary Shapiro hailed Aereo’s streaming-video service as a technology “disrupter” in his keynote Q&A with Aereo CEO and founder Chet Kanojia at CE Week. Calling Aereo’s TV service the kind of innovation that government shouldn’t “mess up,” Shapiro referred back to the Betamax case that set a precedent for a recording product to be legal “if it has significant legal uses and the legal use is recording over-the-air broadcasts.” The Sony v. Universal case opened the door for a “whole range of technology to come in,” Shapiro said. The decision defined the consumer electronics industry for the next 30 years, he said.

Tennessee’s Metro-Moore County E-911 upgraded its next-generation 911 system, said Emergency CallWorks, which provided what it called “a new user experience and enhanced functionality for ... call taking, emergency incident response workflow, GIS and decision support.” The upgrade “provides users with a more intuitive, web browser-based interface making it easy to manage the entire emergency response incident from call to resolution,” the company said Thursday (http://bit.ly/1876Mue). “The software is built to allow faster innovation, lower cost, fault tolerance and needs substantially less hardware than typical 9-1-1 systems.”

The city council of Missoula, Mont., Monday approved $13,125 to help fund a next-generation broadband study. The council voted 9-1, with two members absent. The resolution guarantees matching funds as part of a grant to the Bitter Root Economic Development District. The grant’s purpose is “to contract with a professional service provider to conduct a feasibility study outlining the demand for and options to improve access to extreme broadband at an affordable cost for businesses in Missoula,” said the resolution text (http://bit.ly/12TlTRq). The city “recognizes affordable, high-capacity and high-speed internet service across the city is vital to Missoula’s economic growth,” it said.