Alaska Network Seeks Waiver of Text-to-911 Mandate
The Alaska Wireless Network, the underlying facilities-based carrier for GCI Wireless and ACS Wireless, asked the FCC for a waiver of its requirement that starting Wednesday all wireless carriers had to be able to provide text-to-911 service to emergency call…
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centers. AWN said it has been working with two vendors, Intrado and TeleCommunications Systems, on a possible solution. “Both vendors informed AWN of an issue within LTE network standards that prevent their solutions from capturing and passing through the cell-level location information associated with text messages on AWN’s LTE network, which covers the most populous areas of Alaska,” AWN said. The issue is solvable, but at significant costs, AWN said. “Given the high cost of service and relatively modest served population, it is not reasonable for AWN to commit resources to network architecture of the kinds the nationwide GSM LTE carriers have adopted, including installing the kinds of location infrastructure that those carriers leverage to provide coarse location information for texts to 911,” AWN said.