911 Road Map Proponents Explain Plan to FCC

last month by AT&T, APCO, CTIA, the National Emergency Number Association, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon (see 1411190064). The meeting focused on the “formation of a test bed, dispatchable location commitments, improvements in and deployments of horizontal location technologies, steps to advance vertical location technologies providing back-up solutions for indoor calls, and metrics and deliverables,” the filing said. The industry representatives met with officials from the FCC's Disability Rights Office and the Public Safety Bureau, the filing said. AARP said in a filing that the agency should move forward on its own proposal for location accuracy rules laid out in a February NPRM (see 1402210038). "The carriers’ agreement does not provide accountability or assurance that its plan would be effective," AARP said. "The FCC’s proposed rules provide specific, fair and measurable requirements for indoor location accuracy." AT&T fired a shot at the Find Me 911 coalition and TruePosition over their arguments against the road map. “TruePosition and its fully-controlled FindMe911 coalition is at it again, spreading misinformation and ill-informed criticisms of the APCO, NENA [National Emergency Number Association], and Wireless Industry Roadmap for Improving Location Accuracy,” said Joe Marx, assistant vice president-federal regulatory, in a blog post Friday. He countered arguments that the industry proposal is based on untested technologies. “Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies have been in use for years in commercial location services, and are central to the current wireless ecosystem in ways that will drive strong incentives for further innovation and lasting relevance for years to come,” he said. “The phone companies seem to think if they repeat what is not true often enough, people will ignore the actual wording of the plan they proposed,” said Jamie Barnett, lawyer at Venable who represents the coalition. “Here is what is absolutely true: before the roadmap, the phone companies were against the FCC’s proposed rules because it would hold them accountable. Now they are for the roadmap because it will allow the phone companies to escape accountability for location accuracy. No one should be fooled by this Trojan Horse.” The road map does propose use of untested technologies, relying on creation of a "National Emergency Address Database,” he said. “Instead of enforceable and concrete benchmarks to locate callers, the phone company plan is based on process-oriented steps like ‘tests,’ ‘demonstrations,’ and ‘studies,’ coupled with nice-sounding goals for the deployment of specific, minimal-cost handset technologies that have failed in the past to provide accurate indoor locations.”