911 calling problems were widespread in the wake of the derecho that hit the Midwest and East Coast June 29, Public Safety Bureau Chief David Turetsky said in a report Thursday at the FCC meeting. The agency sought comment on communications breakdowns Wednesday (CD July 19 p15). Turetsky said 911 problems hit parts of country beyond the already well-publicized incidents in northern Virginia. Chairman Julius Genachowski said the FCC will revisit the issue of backup power for telecom facilities.

It’s feasible for Multi-Line Telephone System manufacturers to provide precise 911 location information, but groups that commented Friday differed on the proper role of the FCC in encouraging that capability. Some thought the FCC should pass rules explicitly extending location service requirements to MLTS manufacturers and operators, while others said the FCC was better positioned as an agency to guide the development of voluntary industry standards.

Telecom relay service communications assistants need “a faster speed-of-answer benchmark, skills-based routing, and national certification,” consumer advocates for the deaf told the FCC in a June 28 meeting, said a recent filing (http://xrl.us/bndrzz). The advocates supported a speed-of-answer benchmark faster than the 30-second average if feasible, the filing said. Relay service priorities will include split-screen technology, the filing noted. Challenges are that “VRS must be compatible with nextgeneration 9-1-1;” “interoperability tests that show more than one-half of all VRS phones have problems talking to one another;” and “the roles of VRS provider and equipment/SIP registrar are not clearly separated in the VRS reform proposals,” said Christian Vogler, director of Gallaudet University’s Technology Access Program, the filing said. “Just as teachers and other professionals are required to receive certification, so too should interpreters receive certification,” the advocates noted, despite apparent opposition from interpreters. They also want to choose specific CAs: “Consumers want to be able to select the communications assistant who handles their VRS calls, just as they are able to do with community based organizations that provide interpreters,” the filing said. The advocates included representatives from the Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, National Association of the Deaf and the Association of Late Deafened Adults.

Dish Network met its initial sales targets on the Hopper receiver/DVR, prompting manufacturer EchoStar to court other potential customers, EchoStar Chief Financial Officer Kenneth Carroll said on an earnings call Monday.

The Association of Public Safety Communications Officials has three primary concerns when local officials shut down wireless service, as Bay Area Rapid Transit officials did Aug. 11 at a downtown San Francisco subway station. Comments were due Monday to the FCC on a March 1 public notice from the Public Safety Bureau on wireless service interruptions imposed by officials with an eye on protecting public safety. “APCO’s principal concern is that any such disruption that may be appropriate under relevant law and policy be as narrowly focused as possible to avoid disruption of (i) the public’s ability to call 9-1-1 for emergency assistance; (ii) the ability of government officials themselves to utilize CMRS; or (iii) mission-critical public safety radio communications that may be operating on radio frequencies in spectrum adjacent to CMRS frequencies,” APCO said in a filing (http://xrl.us/bm5tdw).

The FCC wants to extend the Disaster Information Reporting System to include interconnected VoIP and broadband ISPs, said a notice published Monday in the Federal Register (http://xrl.us/bm4vg6). The agency is seeking approval from the Office of Management and Budget for the additional voluntary information collection, which it expects will take around 40 minutes per response. “Increasing numbers of consumers, businesses, and government agencies rely on broadband and interconnected VoIP services for everyday and emergency communications needs, including vital 9-1-1 services,” the FCC wrote, arguing it’s “imperative” DIRS be expanded to include these new technologies. DIRS lets telecom providers electronically inform the commission of damage to communications infrastructure, and request resources for restoration. Comments are due May 23 in OMB control number 3060-1003.

NTIA would receive $47 million in FY 2013 under a Senate appropriations bill approved Tuesday afternoon. The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science adopted the appropriations bill by a 17-1 vote. The amount for NTIA is the same as what President Barack Obama requested and about $1.5 million more than what the agency is estimated to receive in the current fiscal year. The total bill for Commerce, Justice and Science was $51.86 billion, down $1 billion from the FY 2012 enacted level. It provides $6.3 billion total for the Commerce Department, $1.5 billion below the FY 2012 level. The National Institute of Standards and Technology got $826 million, up $75 million from the FY 2012 level. Subcommittee Chair Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., urged the Commerce Department to be “cyber obsessed,” in an appropriations hearing last month (CD March 23 p16). The subcommittee’s House counterpart plans to mark up its own Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bills Thursday at 9:30 a.m. in Room H-140, Capitol Building.

NexGen Global Technologies has a solution for texting to 911, but was unable to exhibit it an Emergency Access Advisory Committee exhibition this week “under advice from legal counsel (due to our technology waiting to be protected under U.S. Patent laws),” the company said in a filing at the FCC. The solution “is web based and easily accessible via a basic web browser,” the filing said (http://xrl.us/bmzttx). “NexGen technology does not require any hardware or software to be installed onsite and no changes need to be made to the existing infrastructure in order for 9-1-1 Communications Centers to use our technology. It is also estimated that a national roll out of the NexGen solution can be handled remotely and within a compressed time frame."

FCC VoIP outage reporting rules will apply to both facilities-based and non-facilities based interconnected VoIP providers, according to the text of the order extending outage reporting requirements to VoIP service providers released Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bmsyer). Because non-facilities-based VoIP providers may have difficulty complying with mandatory outage reporting for underlying broadband networks not in their control, the rules require non-facilities based providers to report service outages only “that involve facilities that they own, operate, lease, or otherwise utilize.”

Spectrum legislation approved by Congress last week as part of the payroll tax cut extension bill offers $115 million to help defray the costs of a next generation 911 (NG911) network. That’s the good news for public safety. The bad news is that amount is less than one twentieth of the expected cost. But public safety officials said other provisions should be helpful in making NG911 a reality.