FCC preparing to tackle 911 reliability during November meeting

FCC commissioners next month are expected to take actions designed to establish a new regulatory framework that will be designed to help ensure the availability and reliability of 911 service as communications increasingly migrate to IP-based technologies.

On the heels of a 911 outage report that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler described as “terrifying” two weeks ago, commissioners tentatively are scheduled to consider two items that are designed to address some of the shortcomings noted in the report during their Nov. 21 meeting.

Traditionally, 911 services were provided to a public-safety answering point by a telephony carrier that owned and operated virtually all critical network elements—usually located relatively close to the PSAP—associated with emergency calls. The introduction of IP-based capabilities into 911 has provided increased efficiencies, functionalities and flexibilities to the emergency-calling system, but it also has resulted in greater consolidation of 911 assets—a scenario that has led to larger-scale outages when failures occur.

“A single 911 call today can involve multiple companies operating in multiple locations across the country, and that means a failure in one place can leave people without 911 service across multiple states, indeed across the nation,” Wheeler states in a blog appearing today on the FCC website. 

“That’s why I am proposing action to protect 911 service as the tech transitions move forward. The proposal I’ve sent my colleagues proposes a 911 governance structure designed to ensure the technology transitions are managed in a way that maximizes the availability, reliability, and resiliency of 911 networks, as well as the accountability of all participants in the 911-call completion process.”

FCC officials have expressed disappointment with the sudden increase in the number of so-called “sunny day” 911 outages—events occurring not because of a natural disaster or other catastrophic event, but because of an implementation error in the emergency-calling system. In addition to the software-coding error that let to an April outage that left the entire state of Washington and parts of six other states without 911 service for several hours, there have been extended “sunny day” 911 outages in the states of Hawaii and Vermont at different times this year.

Wheeler’s proposal includes a draft policy statement and a draft notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), according to FCC senior officials. The draft policy statement would affirm the FCC’s core principles for 911, with an emphasis on the need for the emergency-calling system to be reliable.

If the NPRM is approved, the FCC would seek comment on proposed new rules for 911 regulation, in partnership with state and local authorities. Key elements being proposed include measures to ensure accountability by all parties in the 911 ecosystem—service providers, as well as their third-party vendors—and an expansion of the FCC’s 911 reliability-certification requirements that were adopted in the wake of the 2012 derecho storms that resulted in massive 911 outages, according to an FCC senior official.