In latest E911 quarterly reports at FCC, carriers cited progress ...

said pace of LEC upgrades was “major remaining obstacle to completion of Phase 2 deployment.” It said: “While the majority of LECs appear to have now agreed that such upgrades are necessary, details of how, when and where these upgrades will occur have still not been supplied.” Sprint said deployments scheduled for first half of this year now had been delayed until fall as result of LEC delays and “Sprint’s entire Phase 2 deployment schedule is now threatened.” Sprint PCS urged FCC to require LECs to disclose publicly Phase 2 ALI update schedules so public safety answering points (PSAPs) and wireless carriers could provide that information. Under that scenario, Sprint said, carriers could focus their E911 conversion efforts on areas that had ALI databases that were Phase 2 capable. In other areas, Sprint PCS said that in first quarter of this year it: (1) Completed installation of Phase 2 switch modifications in all Lucent markets in U.S., nearly 3 months ahead of schedule. (2) Sold more than 500,000 GPS-enabled handsets, up from 200,000 in 4th quarter of 2001. (3) Installed more than 240 Phase 1 systems in 3 months and trimmed number of Phase 1 PSAP requests pending more than 6 months by almost one-third. Nextel told FCC in report filed last week that it hadn’t received documentation from PSAPs required by FCC order issued in Oct. on validation of Phase 2 request’s validity. In response to request for clarification by city of Richardson, Tex., FCC in Oct. outlined what constituted valid PSAP request for E911 service. Order said such requests were valid if any upgrades needed on PSAP network would be completed within 6 months of request and if PSAP had made “timely request” to LEC for trunking and other facilities needed for E911 data to be transmitted. (Sprint PCS and Cingular Wireless filed petitions for reconsideration of Richardson order last year). In its E911 report, Nextel said it had requested that PSAPs that had submitted Phase 2 requests provide information required by Richardson order. “But to date only a very few have even attempted to fulfill the Richardson order’s validation requirements,” Nextel said. It said that in next 30 days, it again would contact each PSAP requesting Phase 2 service and “again attempt to elicit information regarding its readiness for Phase 2 E911 service.” Once validity of those requests is determined, carrier said, it would prioritize them for deployment by Oct. 1 or, for those received after April 1, within 6 months of receiving valid request. Nextel also said it had been continuing tests with Motorola of prototype handset with Assisted GPS (A-GPS) capability at Motorola lab in Fla. In March, Nextel said it and Motorola used preliminary versions of A-GPS handset in live network in Baltimore-Washington area. Although network assistance data weren’t yet available for test, Nextel said Motorola could generate “important information about the handset’s functionality in existing networks as well as performance in a nonassisted environment.” When FCC issued E911 Phase 2 orders last fall, it said it was referring to Enforcement Bureau waiver requests by AT&T Wireless and Cingular on GSM portions of their network. Commission is expected to release order on that decision as early as this week, source said.