CTIA’s 9-1-1 Location Technologies Test Bed invited vendors of location accuracy technologies to participate in a new round of testing. “Stages 1 and 2 of the Test Bed focused on verifying the indoor performance of existing or commercially available 9-1-1 location technologies,” the group said in a Friday news release. “The new round, Stage 2a, will enable wireless industry and public safety community stakeholders to evaluate how new and evolving technologies can continue to enhance the capabilities of our nation’s 9-1-1 system.” Stage 2a testing is to start in the San Francisco and Atlanta areas later this year. The FCC approved an order in January 2015 requiring carriers to improve their performance in identifying the location of wireless calls to 911 (see 1501290066).
New York City’s Next-Generation 911 project will have positive impact for the rest of the country, but more funding is needed, the National Emergency Number Association said Wednesday. The city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications released a request for proposals seeking vendors to build the infrastructure supporting the IP-based 911 system, DoITT said in a Tuesday news release. Proposals are due Aug. 8, with work slated to start in December and NG-911 expected to launch in Q1 2022, DoITT said. While NG-911 is in development, the city plans to launch a text-to-911 service by Q1 2018, it said. “New York’s insistence on testing, validation, and standards will have benefits far beyond our largest city,” NENA said in a statement. “To bring NG9-1-1 to the entire country, however, we need a significant injection of federal capital, and soon. Otherwise, many 9-1-1 centers and the responders and citizens they serve could be stuck with expensive, less-reliable legacy equipment and systems for years to come.” New York City officials applauded the project. “Our number one priority is keeping New Yorkers safe, and developing the strongest, most state-of-the-art 911 system is essential to that mission,” said First Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris. “In the 21st century, that means ensuring that New Yorkers who need to communicate with 911 can do more than make a phone call -- we want to give them the ability to send photos, stream video, and more.” NG-911 will make it easier for the city to make further 911 upgrades in the future, added DoITT Commissioner Anne Roest.
By partnering with AT&T, FirstNet assures first responders are more likely to avoid capacity issues in emergencies, consultant Andrew Seybold said Thursday in an email blast. AT&T has much more spectrum available than just FirstNet’s 20 MHz of 700 MHz, Seybold said. “It also has LTE up and running on its own 700-MHz spectrum in band 17, in the AWS band 66, and [Wireless Communications Service] band 30 spectrum. It is also replacing a lot of its systems with LTE in the PCS 1900-MHz band.” That doesn’t mean problems couldn’t occur, he said. “AT&T has to serve its existing customers even during incidents, and it has to make the network available for 9-1-1 emergency traffic. ... Shortage of network capacity during most types of incidents will not be an issue. However, there may be times when AT&T will have to limit the amount of non-FirstNet spectrum being made available to Public Safety.” CEO Randall Stephenson said at J.P. Morgan conference Tuesday he's very excited about deploying the spectrum. “You build this network for first responders, we're going to have to climb every cell site and while you're up on the cell tower, you're going to assume we'll be lighting up all of the spectrum,” he said. “We're basically going to be pre-provisioning a significant amount of capacity as we deploy FirstNet. ... We're going to get a huge performance upgrade as we deploy all this spectrum and bring carrier aggregation to play, and so those three things we'll be executing on heavily over the next 12 months.”
AT&T will deploy next-generation 911 services in Kansas, the first statewide deployment of AT&T ESInet, the carrier said in a Thursday news release. ESInet provides IP-based call routing services to emergency response centers, increasing 911 reliability and expediting emergency response, AT&T said. “Updating our 9-1-1 infrastructure is key to keeping our people safe, and selecting AT&T was an obvious choice,” said Kansas 9-1-1 Coordinating Council Chairman Dick Heitschmidt. AT&T didn't disclose the deal's terms.
Representatives of CTIA and the four major national wireless carriers met with FCC Public Safety Bureau staff on how the carriers can provide the agency with data on their performance on wireless 911 location accuracy. “The nationwide wireless carriers discussed providing, on a voluntary and confidential basis, certain information and data involving Test Bed results and outdoor location accuracy assessments to assist the Bureau’s evaluation of 9-1-1 location accuracy solutions in use by the carriers over time,” said a filing in docket 07-114. The FCC has focused on the issue. The industry is collecting data as required by the FCC in a January 2015 order (see 1501290066).
FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly warned Wednesday that moving to Next-Generation 911 will be expensive, with cost estimates all over the map. O’Rielly spoke to the NG911 Institute. “Consider a 2011 FCC White Paper that put the total nationwide [public safety answering points] PSAP costs at anywhere between $1.44 billion and $2.68 billion,” O’Rielly said, say written remarks. “Compare that to one done for the State of Oregon at the same time that calculated that state’s ten-year costs at approximately $82 million. Do the math, 50 states plus the U.S. territories times $82 million and it’s over $4 billion.” O’Rielly also backed PSAP consolidation, questioning whether the U.S. needs almost 6,000 PSAPs. O’Rielly earlier made that same point to the FCC Task Force on Optimal PSAP Architecture (see 1501260063). “Is there a way to design a more efficient overall system that allows for a reduction in the number of current facilities without increasing the risk to public safety?” he asked now. “I suggest that the answer to this is most certainly, yes. In fact, it’s been done in a number of states already and others are in the middle of doing so.” O’Rielly also repeated warnings that too many states are using 911 funds for other purposes (see 1703020060). ”A number of states currently divert monies collected from consumers under the guise of funding 9-1-1 systems and transfer it to either unrelated public safety purposes or, worse yet, totally unconnected functions,” he said. “In some cases, this means a state is deceiving taxpayers by collecting more than is actually needed to fund its 9-1-1 system and redirecting the excess to other spending purposes. Alternatively, and this is actually much more reckless, the diversion of 9-1-1 fees can leave a state’s system shortchanged and potentially unable to fully meet its public safety needs, delaying necessary updates, training, worker retention, and the like.”
APCO is seeking signatures on an electronic petition to the White House asking that 911 call takers be classified as part of a “protective” occupation, in the same category as police, firefighters and other public safety professionals. “As the federal government nears a final decision on whether to update its classification system describing occupations in the United States, APCO has launched a White House petition entitled 9-1-1 Professionals Should Be Recognized for Protecting and Saving Lives,’” APCO said in a release. “The goal of this petition, timed with National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week, is to draw attention to the need to classify Public Safety Telecommunicators as Protective Service Occupations.” The petition states: "9-1-1 Professionals Should be Recognized for Protecting and Saving Lives."
The National Emergency Number Association said it's pleased wireless carriers' privacy and security plan for the National Emergency Address Database (NEAD) got general support. The FCC Public Safety Bureau sought comment on the plan; replies were due Thursday in docket 07-114 (see 1702280051). NENA said it felt compelled to respond to earlier comments by the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC) and its supporters. They argue access should be provided to 911 entities and their authoritative geographic information system (GIS) data providers for purposes analogous to current address validation, discrepancy reporting and error resolution, NENA wrote. “It is at least implicit in the comments, however, that NSGIC seeks access to data beyond that which was contemplated at the time E9-1-1 and/or NG9-1-1 standards were developed, beyond that which was negotiated between NENA, APCO, and the four largest wireless carriers and included in the Commission's rules, and beyond that which was designed-in to the NEAD architecture. Although NENA agrees entirely with NSGIC that address data utilized for 9-1-1 purposes must be validated in advance of use, we are compelled to reaffirm our commitment to the standards, the agreement and rules, and the significant work that has already gone into architecting the NEAD.” The New York State Office of Information Technology Services said the request to add “pre-validation of a NEAD dispatchable location, including its additional ‘subaddress’ information, as an allowable government use for 9-1-1 purposes’ to the NEAD Privacy and Security Plan” is critical to public safety answering points and GIS data providers. Both “need to confirm civic address locations within the NEAD are valid prior to their use during a 9-1-1 call so that should a call ever come from that device, its associated location is routable for 9-1-1 and usable for dispatch, which ultimately will save lives,” the agency said.
Congress should consider hitching Next-Generation 911 legislation to the $1 trillion infrastructure package under discussion this session, West Safety Services Vice President Mary Boyd plans to testify Wednesday on behalf of the Industry Council for Emergency Response Technologies (iCert). Her advocacy echoes what key Senate Democrats have said this year, a growing push that goes beyond the telecom debate about including broadband funding (see 1702280062). Witnesses plan to tell the House Communications Subcommittee of the needs of NG-911 in funding and legislative tweaks, with significant attention on the i3 standard that the National Emergency Number Association worked on.
APCO’s CEO is pleased with several signs from the National Emergency Number Association board, he told us. NENA took aim in a statement last week at the way APCO characterized language in a draft Senate NG-911 bill from Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. (see 1702280062 and 1703060020). Both groups said they back the draft legislation. NENA cited a message on the draft Senate bill that APCO sent to members March 17 that “attempts to cast doubt on NENA’s NG9-1-1 architecture standard, Detailed Functional and Interface Standards for the NENA i3 Solution,” known as i3. “APCO’s characterizations of the i3 standard are simply wrong," NENA said. "By sowing doubt about the best way forward, APCO has endangered the timely roll-out of NG9-1-1 systems for the American public whom we serve.” Now "that NENA has confirmed that i3 is incomplete and not an accredited standard, that helps to clear the record for 9-1-1 professionals and industry,” APCO CEO Derek Poarch said in a statement Friday. “I also appreciate NENA’s public commitment to finally put its i3 through the ANSI [American National Standards Institute] accreditation process to completion. It is our hope that at that point, i3 can become a build-to standard, and 9-1-1 professionals can rely upon it to ensure full interoperability.”