More Information Expected on Which Text Providers Covered by Text-to-911 Mandate
The FCC likely will provide more information, including a possible consumer advisory, to help clarify which over-the-top text providers are considered “interconnected” and thus subject to new text-to-911 requirements under an order approved by the FCC last week (CD Aug 11 p1), a senior agency official said Thursday. The agency is not now releasing a matrix saying which text apps are interconnected and which are not, the official said.
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The FCC released the order late Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1sXaMG0). It requires all carriers and interconnected OTT providers to have the capacity to transmit text messages to public safety answering points by the end of the year.
Commissioner Ajit Pai, who dissented to the order, questioned then whether it’s reasonable to require subscribers to “somehow intuit” whether an app is considered interconnected “as defined by the FCC.” Commissioner Mike O'Rielly dissented to the part of the order addressing OTT text providers. Among questions he raised were “will innovation in OTT texting be stifled, will interconnected text providers convert their offerings to non-interconnected platforms, will the costs end free OTT text apps?"
Industry lawyers said Thursday many questions remain and it’s unclear the public understands the distinction between interconnected and non-interconnected providers. If someone downloads WhatsApp, a non-interconnected service, on a phone, the first thing a subscriber is asked is “what’s your wireless phone number,” said a wireless carrier executive. “I don’t know how a consumer is going to know whether this is a telephone based application or not.”
The definition of when an OTT provider is considered interconnected is straightforward and requires text-to-911 capability for OTT apps that support texting to and from phone numbers, the senior official told us. The official said the FCC used the same definition in a 2013 order (http://bit.ly/1lYHq3Y) requiring interconnected OTT text providers send “bounce back” messages to users stating that they cannot use the app to send emergency texts.
The order acknowledged the text-to-911 requirement will “impose costs on interconnected text providers,” but found those costs to be “reasonable, particularly in light of the significant public safety benefits of providing text-to-911 service.” The cost of supporting text-to-911 for carriers and OTT providers “must be factored into the general cost of doing business,” the FCC said. “We remind CMRS providers of our fundamental view that text-to-911 will provide significant benefits to all consumers.”
The order noted that the Information Technology Industry Council suggested the costs of compliance could be 50 cents-$1 per year, “which must be multiplied by potentially millions of individuals using a texting application” and textPlus said if it were to charge even $1 to download its app “users would choose or simply migrate to other free, non-interconnected OTT text messaging providers.” The FCC said it had to discount these arguments since both the council and textPlus “failed to support their claims with any documented evidence.”
The order addressed what constitutes an interconnected provider in a footnote. “We divide text applications into two broad categories,” the order said. “(1) interconnected text applications that use IP-based protocols to deliver text messages to a service provider, and the service provider then delivers the text messages to destinations identified by a telephone number, and (2) non-interconnected applications that only support communication with a defined set of users of compatible applications but do not support general communication with text-capable telephone numbers.” (hbuskirk@warren-news.com)