ATIS Critical Work Adopted into New FCC Wireless E911 Location Accuracy Requiremetns

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WASHINGTON, DC – ATIS announces the unveiling of its testing methodology that has made a critical contribution to the recently released FCC Fourth Report and Order on Wireless E911 Location Accuracy Requirements. In the Report and Order (R&O),the FCC adopts a range of measures that will significantly enhance the ability of Public Safety Answering Points to accurately identify the location of wireless 9-1-1 callers. It also strengthens the existing E9-1-1 location accuracy rules to improve location determination for outdoor as well as indoor calls. ATIS is well-positioned to carry out the recommendations set forth in the R&O.

The R&O requires wireless Commercial Mobile Radio Service (CMRS) providers to comply with a set of metrics and to submit live 9-1-1 call data from the six cities (San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Denver/Front Range, Philadelphia, and Manhattan Borough, New York City and their surrounding areas) recommended by ATIS for indoor testing. These regions have been determined to be representative of dense urban, urban, suburban, and rural areas nationally. In support of the indoor testing, which includes solutions to identify the vertical location of a caller (e.g., floor or suite number), ATIS is currently developing test methodologies for such determination solutions. Among ATIS’ other contributions adopted in the R&O are the high-level requirements for accuracy testing methodologies.

“The solutions that the FCC drew from in creating its recommendations were developed in ATIS’ Emergency Services Interconnection Forum (ESIF), a long-standing team of industry experts on this topic,” said ATIS President and CEO Susan Miller. “The recently-launched ATIS Emergency Location Task Force has already started working to develop and implement the requirements set forth in the R&O – and to better understand what it will take to advance location accuracy into the future.”

The new FCC requirements also leverage many aspects of the “Roadmap for Improving E911 Locational Accuracy,” which helped provide the essential foundation for driving improvements to indoor location accuracy. ATIS and its Emergency Location (ELOC) Task Force are major implementers of the roadmap, which was agreed upon by the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO), the National Emergency Number Association (NENA), and the four national wireless CMRS providers: AT&T Mobility, Sprint Corporation, T-Mobile USA, Inc., and Verizon Wireless.

“ATIS provides the industry with a venue to step up collaboratively to meet the challenges that technology innovation has on our emergency communications services,” said Kelly Springer, Director, Regulatory & Location Technology, AT&T, and Co-Chair of the ESIF Emergency Services & Methodologies (ESM) Subcommittee. “We are proud to offer the industry input needed for the solutions so critical to public safety.”

“As an active participant and contributor to FCC emergency communications-related activities, including the FCC Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council, the work being undertaken in ATIS to progress the initiatives outlined in the R&O is critical,” said Susan Sherwood, Manager E911 at Verizon Wireless and ESIF ESM Co-Chair. “This proactive initiative positions the industry to continue its work and achieve the timelines set forth in the new R&O.”

There were three documents referenced in the FCC R&O:

ATIS ESIF (which created the above documents) is also completing a project on Approaches to Establishing Wide Scale Indoor Location Performance, and has undertaken a project on Vertical (z) Axis Measurement Test Methodology.