STATE WITNESSES SUGGEST CHANGES IN E911 BILL
While witnesses representing state and local wireless interests all praised the House Telecom Subcommittee at a hearing Thurs. for addressing deficiencies in E911 deployment, all said there should be some changes in legislation (HR-2898) designed to facilitate its deployment. The bill, by Rep. Shimkus (R-Ill.), would authorize $100 million in spending over 5 years, penalize states that diverted E911 funding, create an E911 office in NTIA and direct the FCC to review E911 accuracy requirements for rural areas.
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“While Public Safety Answering Points [PSAPs] are able to know the location of 95% of wireline 911 calls, we are here today because only about 15% of the nation’s PSAPs are capable of processing wireless 911 calls,” Shimkus said: “Meanwhile, 50% of the calls made to PSAPs each day come from wireless phones, and the percentage is growing.” Telecom Subcommittee Chmn. Upton (R-Mich.) said he hoped to mark up the bill soon. He also said the committee realized more than $100 million would be needed, but said it was a start.
Shimkus asked FCC Wireless Bureau Chief John Muleta what the Commission could do about wireless vendors, which he said also were slowing the conversion to E911. While the FCC has authority over carriers, there’s little it can do to enforce implementation by vendors, he said. Terry Addington, CEO of First Cellular of Southern Ill., said vendors had no accountability and had slowed his company’s transition to Phase 2 E911. He said federal coordination of E911 efforts would help resolve those issues.
Tim Berry, Ind. state treasurer, said while states should be punished for raiding E911 funds, the federal govt. should give local PSAPs the funding they needed for E911. “Sticks need to be pointed at the states, not the PSAPs,” he said. Anthony Haynes, exec. dir., Tenn. Emergency Communications Board, said Sec. 4 of the bill could be used as an “escape hatch for carrier compliance with E911 rules when states divert funds,” and Sec. 5, which allows for review of accuracy standards for rural areas, should be eliminated because location information was perhaps more important in rural areas. Addington stressed the difficulty of rural carriers’ meeting the accuracy requirements.