The Lifeline program is very important to many people, several public interest groups told then-FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn Thursday, said an ex parte filing by Consumers Union (http://bit.ly/16Mj4XI). “Many diverse immigrant communities lack access to basic phone service and would be unable to look for jobs, communicate with family, or use 9-1-1 services” without it, the filing said. Lifeline should be expanded to include broadband, said groups also including the Asian American Justice Center, Center for Digital Democracy, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, National Hispanic Media Coalition, National Urban League, New America Foundation and Utility Reform Network. The groups encouraged Clyburn to issue a rulemaking on inmate calling rates, and look into making more data available to the public on broadband adoption and complaints.
On Wednesday, the Texas Senate unanimously passed legislation relating to the state’s 911 service. House Bill 1972 passed the House easily April 24 and with its Senate passage is now enrolled. The bill (http://bit.ly/11HVLNZ) sets out to revise the liability portions of Texas law relating to 911 service and to address Internet Protocol-enabled service and other technology changes affecting 911 service. According to the Legislature’s analysis (http://bit.ly/107s5GT), the bill would expand liability protections to include “communications service providers, developers of software used in providing 9-1-1 service, and third parties or other entities involved in providing 9-1-1 service” and “extend this protection to the officers, directors, and employees of these providers and associated entities.” It also kills references to “telephone” and replaces them with “communication devices,” among other language changes. The act will take effect Sept. 1 if it is signed into law.
The California Public Utilities Commission should tell the FCC to issue multiple rules related to 911, CPUC staff recommended in a Thursday memo (http://bit.ly/166fkQt). Staff suggested responses to the FCC’s 911 reliability NPRM with comments due May 13. Staff believe the CPUC should tell the FCC to “adopt minimum backup power requirements or standards for central offices and other network locations necessary to ensure the provisioning of 9-1-1 service” but with appropriate flexibility based on many factors. The FCC should “adopt minimum back up power mandates as discussed above, a certification scheme, and a continuation of best practices where mandates do not exist,” CPUC staff suggested the California regulators recommend. “The CPUC should also recommend that if the FCC adopts reporting requirements, the FCC should provide states timely access to the reports pertaining to 9-1-1 networks in their state.”
The Ohio Public Utilities Commission can have lower budgets in the fiscal years 2014 and 2015 because it’s losing authority over the state’s Wireless Enhanced 9-1-1 funds, PUC Chairman Todd Snitchler told the Ohio Senate Tuesday. “The FY14 proposed budget of $71,646,302 million is a 23% decrease from the FY13 budget of $92,978,316 million, and the FY15 proposed budget of $53,254,528 is a 43% decrease of the FY13 budget,” Snitchler said in his written testimony (http://1.usa.gov/100xRGD). The fund, which comes from a 25-cents-per-month wireless surcharge, was created in 2005, he said. Fiscal year 2015 shows an $18.4 million drop in the proposed PUC budget, he said. He noted that two state laws are transferring the supervision of the funds from the PUC to the Ohio departments of taxation and public safety. The PUC will stop administering these funds as of Jan. 1, 2014, where upon “Taxation will be in charge of the collection and distribution of funds at that time, currently an assigned responsibility of a Commission staff member,” he said.
House Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., said in a news release Tuesday that last week’s Boston Marathon attack shows the need for states to move forward on next-generation 911. “First responders in Boston did not hesitate and, without question, saved lives,” Eshoo said. “We owe it to them and to the public to ensure the best possible emergency response technology is being utilized.” Eshoo cited a recent GAO report (http://1.usa.gov/17sEwN7) that said states are making progress on E-911 and that as of March, 98 percent of public safety answering points are capable of receiving Phase I location information and 97 percent have implemented Phase II for at least one carrier (CD April 19 p12). “The GAO report shows states are making good use of funds to implement enhanced 9-1-1 services that can pinpoint the location of emergency callers,” Eshoo said. “But it also shows we are still in the early phases of implementing Next Generation 9-1-1 technology that gives 9-1-1 call centers the ability to receive text, photos and video directly from bystanders at the scene of an emergency.”
Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and a coalition of other advocacy groups for the deaf and hard of hearing told the FCC in a filing released Monday that the agency should authorize Progeny to deploy its E-911 locator service on the 902-928 MHz Multilateration Location and Monitoring Service band. The coalition encouraged the FCC to complete its review of Progeny’s request and encourage wireless carriers to incorporate Progeny’s service and related locator technologies into their networks. Ensuring reliable access to emergency services is a “major concern” for the advocacy groups and Gallaudet University’s Technology Access Program, which also supports the Progeny service, the coalition said. “Accurate location information is a critical element in 9-1-1 response, and the need to locate 911 callers is even more acute in the case of TTY and text-to-911 ‘callers’ who may be unable to provide their location with the speed or accuracy of traditional voice callers,” the coalition said. Progeny’s service will answer the “limitations of existing location identification technologies,” which often cannot accurately locate callers indoors -- and particularly in multi-story structures, the coalition said (http://bit.ly/ZlIyq0).
"It’s really just a set of high-level requirements,” said a carrier official. “In order to implement something consistent that supports all of the [public safety answering points] and all of the different carriers we normally work from an industry standard.”
The District of Columbia’s Office of Unified Communications stands to benefit from the city’s FY 2014 budget. The budget’s Capital Improvements Plan designates “more than $35 million for equipment upgrades at OUC to ensure that these resources remain state-of-the-art, which will include enhanced 9-1-1 service,” the budget notes. D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray sent the budget to the City Council Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/11Ro6QP). The budget includes other upgrades slated to happen around the city and describes how “over $20 million will be invested in technology upgrades at schools and in information systems to track progress of over 100,000 students.”
The Connecticut Legislature is moving forward with a substitute for its bill limiting regulation of Internet Protocol-enabled telephony, and posted its fiscal and overall analyses Monday. House Bill 6401 prevents the state from regulating the rates of interconnected VoIP and IP-enabled service but it “shall not be construed to affect the authority of the Attorney General to apply and enforce the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act” or other general consumer protections, according to the text (http://1.usa.gov/106hNnE). It also won’t affect interconnection obligations for voice traffic or “affect, mandate or prohibit the assessment of enhanced 9-1-1 fees, telecommunications relay service fees or lifeline service fees on interconnected voice over Internet protocol service or any other voice over Internet protocol service,” it said. There'll be zero fiscal impact since it reiterates the current practice of the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, the analysis said. The Energy and Technology Committee voted in favor of the substitute 21-2 earlier this month.
Alabama’s largest county, Jefferson County, chose Emergency CallWorks for its advanced 911 call management and call mapping, the company said Tuesday (http://yhoo.it/15npRBU). “The new system, built to meet and exceed the latest Next Generation (NG) 9-1-1 standards, will help improve emergency response capabilities, consolidate operations and add efficiencies as well as lower technology and operational costs,” it added.