Leaders of the National Association of State 911 Administrators and National Emergency Number Association are urging Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to preserve “a strong role” for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s National 911 Program amid the Trump administration’s government-wide workforce cuts. The program “has been crucial in coordinating state and local 9-1-1 systems -- an area that no other federal entity addresses,” said NASNA Executive Director Harriet Rennie-Brown and NENA CEO Brian Fontes in a letter to Duffy. “This coordination is more essential than ever as over 5,000 local 9-1-1 centers transition to” next-generation 911 technology. “Without support from the National 9-1-1 Program Office, local jurisdictions will struggle with interoperability between and among agencies and jurisdictions -- a key public safety component,” they said. “This is particularly true on our nation’s highways, where an estimated one-third of all 9-1-1 calls originate and where effective coordination and interoperability can save lives.”
The FCC will focus on making GPS and 911 calls more reliable at its March 27 open meeting, Chairman Brendan Carr announced Wednesday. The meeting will be the second with Carr at the helm. Draft meeting items are expected to be posted Thursday.
The Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation filed a paper Wednesday at the FCC on positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) options other than NextNav’s proposal to use 900 MHz spectrum as an alternative to GPS (see 2404160043). The U.S. “must develop alternatives to GPS and strengthen its PNT capabilities,” the paper says. But “granting the NextNav petition is costly in terms of spectrum, not necessary to achieve this goal and likely would not even deliver a real-world improvement in the country’s PNT capabilities.” The paper, filed in docket 24-240, notes China and Russia have terrestrial PNT systems “that make them much more resilient to interference with their satellite navigation systems.” Other vendors and technologies -- including Locata, PhasorLab, the Broadcast Positioning System and enhanced long-range navigation (eLoran) -- also offer alternatives to GPS, the foundation said. “These companies have not asked the FCC for additional spectrum to implement their solutions.”
The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials met with FCC Public Safety Bureau staff to discuss templates for wireless emergency alerts, said a filing Wednesday in docket 15-91. “The Bureau proposed two types of WEA templates for 9-1-1 outages, a static version and a fillable version that can be amended to include certain outage-specific information,” the filing said: “APCO expressed a preference for WEA templates for 9-1-1 outages that can be customized to include critical information such as the location of the outage, an alternative method to reach 9-1-1, and an embedded URL.”
Liberty Media President-CEO Greg Maffei stepping down at year-end with Chairman John Malone becoming interim CEO; Maffei to serve as senior adviser during transition ... Radcom names Benny Eppstein, ex-Amdocs, as CEO, effective Dec. 1 ... The Next Generation 9-1-1 Institute elects to board Todd Piett, Motorola Solutions; Jennifer White, RapidSOS; Manuel Silva, Frontier; Eric Hagerson, T-Mobile; and Mike Tan, AT&T.
The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials warned that dispatchable location of wireless calls to 911 may not happen. APCO representatives met with an aide to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “The promise of dispatchable location has substantially faded since it was heralded by the industry and identified as the gold standard for public safety” in an FCC order “nearly 10 years ago,” said a filing last week in docket 07-114. “While wireless carriers may be delivering dispatchable locations for a small number of wireless 9-1-1 calls, the methods being used and whether/how any testing has been conducted are unknown,” APCO said. There is also “a lack of uniformity among the reports produced by the carriers, which makes it difficult to compare and evaluate their efforts.”
Some candidates for state utility commissions promised to take on broadband and other telecom matters if they win election this year. Eight states will elect utility regulators this year: Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota. In addition, a New Mexico ballot question will ask voters to authorize millions of dollars for upgrading public safety communications. Meanwhile, Oregon voters will consider a universal basic income that would require Comcast and other big companies to foot the bill.
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.”
AT&T suffered a wireless outage Tuesday night that apparently started in the Southeast and spread throughout the U.S., based on social media and other reports. A software issue caused the outage, which was resolved, AT&T said Wednesday. The FCC is investigating, a spokesperson emailed.
The global outage of Microsoft systems caused by a software update from cybersecurity company Crowdstrike grounded airplanes globally and affected some broadcasters and 911 systems but spared others, reports from multiple companies and state agencies said.