The long and winding E-911 road Xypoint tries to speed things along >BY JASON MEYERS, Wireless Networks Editor

Wireless network operators are faced with several technological challenges in meeting the Federal Communications Commission mandate on enhanced 911 service. But the most immediate concerns for carriers are proving to be how those network alterations will be paid for and how carriers will be protected from 911 liability.

In the interest of its carrier customers, Xypoint is pushing for answers. With input from operators, the wireless location solutions developer has drafted a model bill with the goal of establishing a template for putting the FCC order into action.

"We see this as a part of providing full-scale service to our customers," said Reuven Carlyle, vice president of external affairs at Xypoint. "Everyone's looking for objective information, and someone needed to get the ball rolling.

The Xypoint model breaks down cost recovery along the lines of the FCC order, which calls for carriers to provide phone number and cell site location for 911 callers by April 1998 and a more precise location within five years.

"This issue has a two-part approach-regulatory and technological," Carlyle said. "Those two parts have to go in unison.

Xypoint's model bill puts rulemaking responsibility for cost and indemnity issues in the hands of the states, bypassing local governments in the interest of uniformity.

"It is absolutely imperative that a cost-recovery mechanism be at the state level rather than the local level," Carlyle said. "It makes more sense for carriers to go to one place for reimbursement.

The cost provisions of the bill are modeled after the 911 reimbursement fund in Oregon, Carlyle said. The goal of the indemnity issue is to provide wireless carriers the same broad immunity from liability as wireline providers.