Congress Has 'Unique Ability' to Ease NG911 Transition, Wheeler Tells Schumer
Congress must “take action to create national enablers to accelerate the transition to NG911, lower its cost to [public-safety answering points] PSAPs, and institute critical cybersecurity protections,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler told Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in an Oct. 21…
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letter the agency released Tuesday. Schumer asked about next generation-911 vulnerabilities in September, and Wheeler said in “multiple testimonies before Congress, I have suggested that the FCC is close to the limit of what it can do to facilitate NG911 and called on Congress.” There’s a need for "coordinated action and leadership at both the state and national level to guarantee that our 911 emergency systems remain secure and available to provide services around the clock” and “Congress has the unique ability to make the transition to NG911 a national priority and to provide the means to achieve it,” he told Schumer, who's expected to lead Senate Democrats next Congress. Wheeler acknowledged vulnerabilities that Schumer was worried about and said U.S. PSAPs are “at a crossroads” in the transition to NG-911. An FCC task force on optimal 911 center architecture “will deliver a detailed set of recommendations regarding establishing Emergency Communications Cybersecurity Centers to conduct inspection and filtering of PSAP call traffic” later this year and “will serve as the foundation for further concerted industry top-to-bottom investigation of the how to protect PSAPs from cyber and denial of service attacks,” Wheeler said. Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Bill Nelson, D-Fla., committed in September to introducing NG-911 legislation “in the near future” (see 1609150058). No bill was introduced before the current recess period.