FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler announced today that Commissioners tentatively plan to consider a 911 location accuracy report and order at its Jan. 29 meeting. The draft item is expected to propose incorporating provisions from rules the FCC proposed early last year as a well as from an alternative road map unveiled more recently by two major public safety groups and the four national wireless carriers.
A tentative agenda for the meeting released this afternoon said the order will “ensure that accurate caller location information is automatically provided to public safety officials for all wireless calls to 911, including for indoor calls, to meet consumer and public safety needs and expectations, and to take advantage of new technological developments.”
In February 2014, the FCC proposed to require wireless carriers to locate 911 callers horizontally indoors within 50 meters for 67% of calls within two years of the rules being adopted and for 80% of calls within five years (TRDaily, Feb. 20, 2014). For vertical location, carriers would have to locate callers within three meters, or approximately floor-level location, for 67% of calls within three years and for 80% of calls within five years.
The wireless industry argued that the proposed deployment milestones were too aggressive and infeasible given the state of technology, and in November the four national wireless carriers, the National Emergency Number Association, and the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials-International unveiled an alternative plan that focuses on providing a dispatchable location to first responders (TRDaily, Nov. 14, 2014).
In the plan, carriers “commit to obtain a location fix using ‘heightened location accuracy technologies’ for the following percentage of [all] wireless 9-1-1 calls from the date of the Agreement consistent with Section 4(a),” which is based on live call data: “i) 40% of all wireless 9-1-1 calls within two years; ii) 50% of all wireless 9-1-1 calls within three years; iii) 75% of all VoLTE wireless 9-1-1 calls within five years; and iv) 80% of all VoLTE wireless 9-1-1 calls within six years.
“Wireless 9-1-1 calls that originate from ‘heightened location accuracy technologies’ are calls with fixes for A-GNSS (GPS and/or GLONASS), dispatchable location, and the proportion of calls from any other technology or hybrid of technologies capable of location accuracy performance of 50m using a blended composite of indoor and outdoor based on available data from a test bed and/or drive test performance,” according to the plan.
The parties signing the plan agreed to work on a z-axis, or vertical, solution and they said they would hammer out a specific metric later.
The road map has drawn criticism from a wide range of entities, including public safety, public interest, deaf and hard of hearing, senior citizen, and state regulator groups, as well as technology vendors and other current and retired public safety officials (TRDaily, Dec. 16, 2014).
In their comments, critics of the plan complain that there are too many unknowns, holes, and loopholes in it. For example, they correctly note that it would not commit carriers to actually deploy dispatchable location, includes weaker milestones than the FCC’s proposals, does not require robust indoor accuracy because of a blended outdoor/indoor framework, does not require a vertical solution, and would rely on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies that haven’t been used to enable the deployment of public safety services.
But the proposal has attracted support – or at least generally positive comments – from groups representing smaller wireless carriers; wireless equipment, technology, and integrator entities; groups representing state legislators and local telecommunications officials; some public safety professionals; and advocates for the disabled. Supporters say the road map’s milestones were more realistic than those proposed by the FCC and would allow first responders to more accurately find 911 callers, while allowing the public safety community and the public to benefit from the latest commercial technologies.
In a blog posting, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler called the road map “a novel approach that has the potential to close the readiness gap through use of known locations of indoor wireless nodes. This approach will ultimately result in capabilities that will evolve with the continued change anticipated in the number of ways consumers might call for help in the future. “The roadmap proposal is a big step forward, but we also understand and appreciate the valid criticisms raised by some public safety stakeholders,” Mr. Wheeler added. “We have listened and learned from all sides in this debate. Today, I am circulating an order to my fellow Commissioners that takes advantage of the good work done by the carriers, APCO, and NENA, while also providing confidence-building measures and backstop thresholds that set clear targets and deadlines for improving indoor location and hold parties accountable for results.”
Mr. Wheeler added, “We want to harness new technologies not only to enhance 911, but also to make the Commission more accessible to the public and more effective as a consumer advocate.”
The draft order is expected to include provisions from both the FCC’s third further notice of proposed rulemaking and the road map. For example, it is expected to mandate both horizontal and vertical milestones. While the draft order would extend the FCC’s proposed deployment milestones a bit, it is still expected to propose accuracy thresholds of 50 meters for horizontal calls and 3 meters for vertical calls. It also is expected to allow carriers to use dispatchable location to meet the requirements, but if that does not work, the mandates would still have to be met using other technologies. The draft item also would propose using some live call data to measure benchmarks, as proposed by the road map. The item is also expected to support the road map’s test bed component.
Some outside stakeholders who have followed the 911 proceeding closely told TRDaily today that agency officials had indicated that the 911 location accuracy order would incorporate provisions from both the third further notice as well as the road map. They also said that some officials dislike the road map’s blending of indoor and outdoor calls and want to make indoor calls stand on their own in terms of compliance. And they said there were indications that the draft item would propose longer implementation periods in exchange for more votes on the item.
When the FCC adopted the third further notice last year, Republican Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O’Rielly expressed concern that the deployment milestones were too aggressive and not feasible given the state of technology.
“We are pleased the Commission is moving forward in a timely manner to address the important issue of location accuracy,” NENA Chief Executive Officer Brian Fontes told TRDaily today.
In response to today’s tentative agenda and Mr. Wheeler’s blog posting, Scott Bergmann, vice president-regulatory affairs for CTIA, said, “The wireless industry remains steadfast in its commitment to improve wireless 9-1-1 location accuracy for both outdoors and indoors. As APCO, NENA and the four national wireless carriers have demonstrated, the Roadmap offers a historic, comprehensive and robust approach to improving 9-1-1 location accuracy, particularly indoors, by taking advantage of readily-available and proven location-based technologies. We appreciate the Chairman’s acknowledgement of the Roadmap’s potential to improve indoor location accuracy by capturing evolving technologies that will benefit wireless consumers and first responders. We look forward to continuing to work with the Commission to deliver on the benefits of the Roadmap.”
At their Jan. 29 meeting, which is scheduled to start at 10:30 a.m., Commissioners also plan to hear a presentation on a new online help center that was recently launched to assist consumers in filing and monitoring informal complaints. The center, announced earlier this week (TRDaily, Jan. 5), is also designed to provide easier access to educational materials. It replaced the agency’s previous complaint system.
“This will enable consumers who have billing disputes with their carrier, received unwanted telemarketing calls, or wish to file a complaint on some other service issue to file their complaint more easily, and track the status of complaints 24/7,” Mr. Wheeler said in his blog posting. “Over time, the system will enable us to track and provide more refined data on consumer complaint trends to the public as well as FCC staff, which will help better inform our policymaking and enforcement activities.”- Paul Kirby, paul.kirby@wolterskluwer.com
Courtesy TRDaily