The FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is “working expeditiously to pull together options” for Commissioners to consider in its indoor 911 location accuracy proceeding, David Simpson, the bureau’s chief, said today. However, he could not say when action by the Commission was likely.

During a luncheon sponsored by the Federal Communications Bar Association’s homeland security and emergency communications subcommittee, Mr. Simpson stressed the importance of Americans being able to be located indoors just as they can be outdoors. “We’ve got to take steps to close that gap,” he said. Continue reading →

The FCC announced that it plans to delay its incentive auction until early 2016, from the previous date of mid-2015, citing legal challenges to the incentive auction order it adopted in May (TRDaily, May 15).   “As Chairman [Tom] Wheeler indicated several weeks ago, the court challenges to the auction rules by some broadcasters have introduced uncertainty.  Earlier this week, the court issued a briefing schedule in which the final briefs are not due until late January 2015.  Oral arguments will follow at a later date yet to be determined, with a decision not likely until mid-2015,” Gary Epstein, chair of the Incentive Auction Task Force, said in a blog posting this afternoon.

“We are confident we will prevail in court, but given the reality of that schedule, the complexity of designing and implementing the auction, and the need for all auction participants to have certainty well in advance of the auction, we now anticipate accepting applications for the auction in the fall of 2015 and starting the auction in early 2016,” Mr. Epstein added. “Despite this brief delay, we remain focused on the path to successfully implementing the incentive auction.” Continue reading →

On October 27, 2014, the FCC late this afternoon released a report and order that eliminates a Dec. 31, 2016, deadline for public safety licensees to convert their 700 megahertz band narrowband spectrum to 6.25 kilohertz technology.  The order in PS dockets13-87 and 06-229 and WT docket 96-86 also reallocates the 700 MHz band reserve channels to general use with priority access going to relocated T-band licensees, and it  designates secondary trunking channels for air-to-ground (ATG) communications.

Among other things, the item also addresses several issues related to Project 25 public safety voice systems, declines to establish a nationwide interoperability travel channel, permits on a secondary basis voice operations on data interoperability channels, and declines to increase the 2 watt ERP (effective radiated power) for radios that operate on the mobile-only low-power channels. Continue reading →

Whoever thinks that their call to 911 would go unanswered? But in a terrifying incident this spring, thousands of Americans found themselves in need of help — and got none.   For six hours, emergency services went dark for more than 11 million people across seven states. The entire state of Washington found itself disconnected from 911. The outage may have gone unnoticed by some, but for the more than 6,000 people trying to reach help, April 9 may well have been the scariest time of their lives.

Now a study from the Federal Communications Commission offers the most in-depth explanation of the outage and why it occurred. In a 40-page report, the FCC found that an entirely preventable software error was responsible for causing 911 service to drop. The incident affected 81 call dispatch centers, rendering emergency services inoperable in all of Washington and parts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, California, Minnesota and Florida.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/10/20/how-a-dumb-software-glitch-kept-6600-calls-from-getting-to-911/