Elusive E-911

The overwhelming acceptance of wireless telephony, coupled with the mobile nature of its subscribers, continues to pose unique challenges to the provision of E-911 service. The country's 60 million wireless subscribers generated an estimated 22 million 911 wireless calls per year that were sent to public safety answering points.

In the six years since the Texas Advisory Commission on State Emergency Communications first urged the FCC to address the E-911 issue, the industry has made much progress. At about midway through the FCC's 5-year plan, vendors are developing their varied E-911 solutions; carriers are sorting through the offerings in an attempt to find the one that will work best for them. But throughout this process, the regulatory wheels continue to grind.

Open Issues

A smorgasbord of E-911 issues must be resolved before E-911 will be provided effectively.

* Waiver requests for text telephone (TTY) provision in a digital environment: On Dec. 4, 1998, wireless licensees were required to file waiver petitions. Thus far, the FCC only has granted "temporary" waivers pending consideration of the permanent requests.

* E-911 funding mechanisms: The FCC has declined to prescribe the features of acceptable funding mechanisms. This leaves the manner in which wireless carriers will be compensated for E-911 services up to the state and local authorities.

* The FCC's uncompleted further NPRM: The FCC has not concluded its "Further Notice," which was a part of the 1996 Order and was intended to decide how much and how fast automatic location identification (ALI) accuracy and reliability should improve beyond the 2001 standard. It also was supposed to decide the extent to which 911 access should be rendered ubiquitously.

* Wireless carrier E-911 liability: BellSouth and CTIA have pending petitions for further reconsideration asking the FCC to permit limitations on wireless E-911 liability, at least to the extent of allowing carriers to file tariffs for that limited purpose. Recently, in answer to the California 911 program manager, the FCC refused to impose liability limitation as a necessary pre-condition for Phase I service.

* Handset-based ALI: Since 1996, most have assumed that Phase II ALI solutions were likely to come faster from terrestrial radio location than GPS systems. Some vendors claim that they have overcome GPS' technical hurdles, that mass production would lower costs, and that GPS would be more accurate and reliable.

Rather than change its Phase II rules at this point, the FCC is proposing to accept waiver applications from carriers that show that the benefits of using GPS in new phones will outweigh the "costs" -- the inability to use existing non-GPS phones and the expense of retrofitting old phones or replacing them with GPS phones.

The Year Ahead

The FCC has before it a buffet of unresolved E-911 issues. It is conceivable that the FCC never will rule on the permanent TTY waivers because the temporary waivers have been granted. Those do not terminate until the petitions for permanent waivers are acted upon. If the permanent waivers are not acted upon before carriers become TTY-compliant, permanent waivers will not be necessary.

As for the remaining issues, the FCC has the flexibility to put all of the issues on its plate or merely nibble on a few. Although an E-911 bill may emerge from Congress, the responsible committee chairpersons have made it clear that Congress will encourage the FCC to actively consider and conclude the various E-911 issues.

Both industry groups and public-safety groups likely will urge the FCC into action, with the former interested in compensation issues and the latter in regulation and timetable issues. Michael Altschul, CTIA vice president-general counsel, said that meaningful progress can be made on the implementation of E-911 only if the FCC addresses the long-outstanding compensation issues. The public safety community's response is that the FCC answer need not be a "federalization" of those issues. History shows that without consensus between these two groups, no significant progress will be made.

Despite all of the work that vendors and carriers are doing to solve E-911 issues, there still is much confusion regarding 911 itself, which isn't used ubiquitously to summon help in a crisis. At least 15 emergency numbers are used throughout the country. CTIA president & CEO Tom Wheeler recently testified before the House subcommittee of Telecommunications, Trade and Consumer Protection, which is considering a bill that would make 911 the universal emergency number. Wheeler said that more than 98,000 people use their wireless phones to summon help each day, and 35% of wireless subscribers report that they have used their phones in emergency situations. He urged subcommittee members to end consumer confusion and make the emergency number resource more powerful by giving all wireless users the same access to emergency help.