The FCC’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau today extended a waiver from the requirement for providers of IP (Internet protocol) Relay services to deliver 911 calls from registered users who have not yet been verified, pending a decision by the Commission on whether to adopt a permanent prohibition against the handling of 911 calls from unverified IP Relay callers.

The bureau recalled in today’s order that it initially adopted the interim waiver, which expired April 29, in a 2014 order on its own initiative “after receiving information from Sprint, an IP Relay provider, about an increase of unverified registrants using IP Relay service to hide their identities in order to place calls to 911, in an attempt to trick Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) into dispatching emergency services based on false reports of emergency situations, a practice known as ‘swatting.’

“Sprint explained that these callers provide very little information to the PSAP and hang up quickly, but not before the need to dispatch emergency personnel has been triggered, potentially causing alarm and even danger for the targeted residents and emergency service personnel and wasting the limited resources of emergency responders,” the bureau added.

The bureau said in today’s order that it found “that the facts before the Commission continue to indicate that it is unlikely that a user who has not been verified, and for whom IP Relay is therefore not the user’s customary way of making telephone calls, will seek to use IP Relay service for legitimate calls to 911.”

Today’s order extended the waiver retroactively to April 29. —Lynn Stanton, lynn.stanton@wolterskluwer.com