Copps: Martin’s FCC Strongly Committed To Homeland Security
FCC Comr. Copps sees the new Commission as strongly committed to public safety and homeland security. “With our new Chairman [Martin]… I am very hopeful we will make real progress here,” he told public safety officials at the APCO conference late Thurs. “He [Martin] strikes me as deeply committed to public safety and homeland security -- and you've seen some indications of that already,” Copps said.
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Martin’s FCC recently required VoIP providers to deliver effective E-911 service to their customers by Nov. 28. It also required wireline Internet access providers and interconnected VoIP services to comply with CALEA requirements within 18 months after the order, adopted Aug. 5 (CD Aug 8 p1), takes effect. “You will see this Commission working hard, working together and working with you for enhanced public safety,” Copps said: “I am looking for good things on these fronts from Kevin’s leadership.” Copps enumerated ideas for the FCC to focus on as it proceeds.
“The Commission needs to be front-and-center in the action, pushing for interoperability, striving for redundancy, acting as a convener, an expediter and a planning innovator,” Copps said. He commended the agency for taking “some good and important steps,” but urged the FCC to delve more deeply into homeland security, “more fully” utilizing “outstanding FCC resources” in that work. “The FCC is not even mentioned in The 9/11 Commission Report,” he said: “We need a higher profile -- not for the sake of profile but for the sake of progress. The Commission has more to contribute than it has.”
One focus of a separate FCC homeland security office
- which Copps has long advocated -- “could be to help local public safety organizations share ideas, prepare plans, vet proposals and coordinate them with both government and industry.” The FCC is rumored to be weighing establishment of a bureau devoted to homeland security; Copps indicated such idea make sense: “Why should every jurisdiction across this land have to start at square one when others have already done a lot of work? Think of the time and money and even lives this could save.”
Copps said he’s “worried” about the likelihood of carriers seeking waivers of the Dec. 31 deadline for handset-based E-911 roll-out this fall. By Dec. 31, 95% of the embedded base of nationwide carriers’ phones are supposed to be E-911 capable. But several wireless carriers, including Nextel and Alltel, have told the FCC they expect to miss that deadline by as much as 2 years. In recent wireless merger proceedings, Copps pushed for “a promise by the companies that they would either meet the deadline or have an acceptable waiver or consent decree in place by the end of the year,” he said: “But the companies pushed back, we lacked a majority to require it, and the problem got pushed off for another day.”
Copps said he also is “concerned” about emergency calls using VoIP. The FCC gave interconnected VoIP providers until Nov. 28 to implement E-911 solutions. “To meet the deadline, we need to make sure VoIP providers are getting access to selective routers and other functionalities necessary for providing emergency calling capabilities,” Copps said: “And all of this needs to be carefully coordinated with PSAPs and emergency responders.” Copps noted the obligation to be “ever mindful of the needs of America’s disabilities communities” to “include their special needs in our planning from the get-go so that all our communications systems work for them.”
The FCC also should help with “integrating our hospitals, health centers and doctors into the nation’s emergency response communications system,” Copps said: “Not many hospitals, especially in rural America, have reliable 2-way communications systems that allow them to communicate with local and federal law enforcement and emergency personnel in a crisis… Here, too, the FCC could play a helpful role as expediter and as a forum for the exchange of ideas and proposals.”