FCC E911 deadline a bust

Despite the increased attention by carriers on emergency services such as wireless E911, the FCC may need more than an unenforceable deadline to encourage them to comply.

As of last week, the FCC had granted only one waiver to VoiceStream Wireless and had yet to decide the fate of the remaining 54 waivers it had received. An FCC spokeswoman would not speculate on when the commission would announce any of its decisions regarding the waivers.

Cahners In-Stat Group analyst Allen Nogee isn't sure how the FCC and carriers will resolve the E911 dilemma, but he doesn't anticipate the FCC granting a majority of the waivers. He suspects the commission might instead put the Oct. 1 deadline behind it and simply encourage carriers to pick up the pace.

Nogee does not expect any major fines to be levied. “The FCC requirements are kind of tough for any carriers to meet anyway…. You can't do that in today's world with shareholders,” he said.

Indeed, the current economic climate puts the FCC in a difficult position of requiring carriers to spend millions on E911 technology that they may not be able to afford or enforcing fines that could put carriers into financial trouble.

Nogee does not believe fines would make carriers move any faster, considering E911 technology and services could cost carriers millions or even billions of dollars to implement.

But the public safety industry and Congress don't agree with that rationale, and they have been putting some pressure on the FCC to weigh carriers' waivers carefully and consider appropriate penalties.

“Where a carrier refuses to put a good effort forward, we will encourage enforcement actions,” said Bill Hinkle, director of the Hamilton County Communications Center in Ohio.

Some carriers such as AT&T Wireless and Cingular Wireless said they expected to meet the deadline, though that may be a stretch because AT&T Wireless only recently reconsidered the technology it would use because it had problems satisfying the FCC's location accuracy requirement for network-based solutions. Both carriers have claimed that location technology for GSM systems is lacking.

Nogee was fairly certain Sprint PCS would be in compliance with the handset-based technology rules, which state that a carrier must begin selling automated location-capable handsets by Oct. 1 and have 100% of all new handsets GPS-compatible by Dec. 31, 2002. A spokeswoman for Sprint PCS confirmed the carrier would have a handset ready to sell as of Oct. 1.

With only a few compliant carriers and an ineffectual deadline looming, the ball is now in the FCC's court.

“I don't think anyone's going to make all of the deadlines,” Nogee said. “Carriers do want to rescue people, but it comes down to shareholders and what it will cost. It seems to have taken more time for carriers to sort out than the FCC anticipated.”