CSRIC Approves Reports on 911 Over Wi-Fi, Enhancing Wireless Alerts
The FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council unanimously approved reports by working groups on 911 services over Wi-Fi and the wireless emergency alert application programming interface. The Tuesday meeting was the first this year for CSRIC and the first with an in-person component in more than three years, though some participants were remote. The December meeting was supposed to be in person, but the FCC made it virtual because of an expected ice storm (see 2212150070).
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The report by the 911 Service Over Wi-Fi WG offers the FCC several suggestions for follow up and possible rulemaking, members said. Questions remain. “It is difficult to determine and define the conditions of a typical cellular outage or how many additional 911 calls could be completed if various methods of expanding 911 access over Wi-Fi were to be deployed,” said Jeanna Green, T-Mobile engineer and member of the working group.
The report says the FCC should gather and maintain accurate information on Wi-Fi calling from the carriers, said Peter Musgrove, lead member of the technical staff at AT&T, who presented the conclusions. “It would be useful to have all of that information in one place to encourage a uniform, standard way of doing [calling] among all the operators, both large and small,” he said.
The report urges future focus on the evolving emergency preparedness communication service (EPCS), which, similar to the government emergency telecommunications service and other priority access programs, would give first responders priority access to Wi-Fi, Musgrove said. “When ECPS is eventually implemented and used, you want to make sure you have a fair policy to still allow members of the public to get access to 911 over Wi-Fi,” he said.
The report also takes on a “very difficult policy issue,” urging the FCC to consult with the FAA, airlines, carriers and other players on rules on whether texts to 911 aboard aircraft using Wi-Fi should be permitted, Musgrove said. One potential issue is that a text from the air may not be useful since help on the ground could be hours away, he said. The report also urges the FCC to clarify that access point providers or others offering Wi-Fi won’t fall under “new regulatory obligations as a function of developing technologies and standards that enable 911 service over Wi-Fi,” he said.
The report recommends the FCC open a proceeding on rules allowing 911 calls on Wi-Fi from devices when Wi-Fi calling hasn’t already been enabled and cellular service isn’t available, Musgrove said. “It seems a logical extension and something that could help ... people,” he said.
The second report approved was by the WG on WEAs. One of the areas looked at was the use of maps, said co-Chair Farrokh Khatibi, Qualcomm engineering director. “We are so used to looking at maps on our devices,” he said: Presenting WEAs similarly "via a map application on the device, would enhance the user experience. If the user can see where the alert area is with respect to the map, they can make the proper decision on what direction to go or how to move away from the alert area.”
Another proposed enhancement is a dedicated audio attention signal or vibration for some emergencies, Khatibi said, citing earthquake warnings. An earthquake alert “uses the same attention signal and vibration cadence as any other WEA alert,” he said. Khatibi noted Japan piloted using special warnings for earthquakes and tsunamis. The report looks at the need for an expanded language set for WEAs and translation programs on smartphones, he said. “Understanding the alert in your native language is very important,” he said: “Right now, we have alerts presented in English and Spanish, but we obviously have a lot of other languages that are possible.”
Neither report was released by the FCC Tuesday.