State and local 911 stakeholders urged the FCC in filings on the commission’s 911 governance NPRM (docket 14-193) to not usurp state and local jurisdiction on 911 issues in its pursuit of revised rules that will curb 911 outages like the April 2014 multistate event. The FCC’s rulemaking proposal followed that widespread outage, which the FCC later determined was caused by a software error at an Intrado 911 call processing center in Englewood, Colorado (see 1410170057). Carriers and public safety groups urged the FCC to consider a consensus proposal from the groups that would curb 911 outages without requiring the implementation of new rules (see 1503240049).
Carriers and public safety groups are working together on consensus rules aimed at curbing 911 outages, the National Emergency Number Association said in comments at the FCC, posted by the agency Tuesday. Various industry groups and companies warned against imposing new rules. Comments were filed in docket 14-193. The NPRM came in the wake of the April 2014 multistate 911 outage, the subject of an October report by the FCC.
APCO, the National Emergency Number Association, USTelecom and others jointly asked the FCC to extend the deadline for filing comments on its Nov. 21 911 governance NPRM. “The Notice raises a large number of jurisdictional, governance, and legal authority questions with implications to every aspect of 9-1-1 service,” the group said. “Given the scope and complexity of the issues raised in the notice, the Joint Petitioners believe that an extension of the comment filing deadlines would be in the public interest.” Comments should be due no earlier than March 23, replies no earlier than April 21, the filing said. Comments are currently due Monday, replies April 7. The filing was posted Friday in docket 13-75.
The Public Safety Bureau circulated for FCC action an item addressing call-forwarding requirements for non-service-initialized phones. Public safety officials said Tuesday that the commission circulated an NPRM that will pose various questions and help the FCC develop a time table for sunsetting a requirement that out-of-service cellphones can still call 911. Public safety answering points have complained of myriad prank 911 calls made from old, untraceable phones. APCO, the National Emergency Number Association and National Association of State 9-1-1 Administrators filed a petition in 2008 at the FCC seeking action in effort to stop fraudulent calls to 911 (see 0803050126).
The FCC 911 governance and accountability rulemaking’s desired transparency and situational awareness goals “may be able to be reasonably achieved without being overly cost-prohibitive or unduly burdensome,” Texas 911 officials told Public Safety Bureau officials during a meeting Wednesday. Texas Commission on State Emergency Communications General Counsel Patrick Tyler and Richard Muscat, Bexar Metro 9-1-1 Network District director-regulatory affairs, met with Deputy Chief David Furth and other bureau staff members to discuss potential benefits from additional communication and collaboration among 911 stakeholders to “enable more detailed review and consideration of issues and potential optimal alternatives,” the Texas officials said in an ex parte notice posted Monday. The bureau is accepting comments on an NPRM, in dockets 13-75 and 14-193, through March 9. Replies are due April 7. The Texas officials said more-detailed contingency plans filed with the FCC “might provide a coherent picture of relevant 9-1-1 information in a transparent manner.” Updates to those plans could be coordinated with notices of “material changes” similar to the notices the FCC uses to notify competitors about changes to LECs that might affect competitors, with any updates that go beyond minimum transparency requirements potentially benefiting all stakeholders, the Texas officials said. This approach to contingency plans "might be preferable to including within new FCC rule requirements at this time subcontractors, operating system suppliers and/or system integrators responsible for certain functions," the officials said. The IP transition and the shift to next-generation 911 technology “is still in the early stages,” with areas that have transitioned to NG-911 and IP technologies usually still needing to address “wholesale” 911 interconnection and competitive carrier issues included in the FCC’s local competition order, the Texas officials said. There may be potential opportunities for more “voluntary cooperation” on 911 transparency and situational awareness given that most areas are still in early stages of implementing NG-911 and IP technologies, the officials said.
Motorola Solutions said it successfully deployed its Advanced 9-1-1 text-to-911 technology in Kershaw County, South Carolina. It's the state's first jurisdiction to implement text-to-911, something that less than 4 percent of U.S. public safety answering points have done, Motorola Solutions said in a Tuesday news release. The company said it’s continuing to partner with Intrado on next-generation 911 technology in the county and elsewhere.
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.”