Find Me 911 coalition makes its case in opposition to cellular carriers’ indoor 911 location proposal

FCC commissioners should approve proposed rules governing location-accuracy rules for 911 calls made from cellular phones used inside a building, as well as initiate a proceeding that would let the agency evaluate ways to leverage the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and small-cell technologies proposed by U.S. nationwide wireless carriers, according to an official with the Find Me 911 coalition.

What the FCC should avoid is the temptation to have the carriers’ proposal—designed to provide dispatchable-address information with 911—replace the FCC proposed rules entirely at this time, according to Jamie Barnett, the director of the Find Me 911 coalition.

“I am for dispatchable address; I think it is a good goal,” Barnett said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “The problem is that … there’s not enough in the record to adopt rules on dispatchable address now.

“What I’d like to see instead is … [for the FCC to] adopt the rules and still do everything that the carriers have said they would do. They’re not mutually exclusive by any means, yet the carriers—for some reason—want to displace the rules [proposed by the FCC].”

Under current FCC rules, carriers do not have to meet location-accuracy benchmarks for cellular 911 calls made from indoors; existing rules address only outdoor cellular 911 calls. In February, the FCC initiated a proceeding to consider location-accuracy rules for indoor 911 calls, which represent 60-80% of all emergency calls from cell phones, depending on the geographic area.

Last month, the four nationwide cellular carriers—AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile—reached a voluntary agreement with the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) and the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) on a roadmap to improve accuracy of indoor 911 calls from cellular devices. The carriers’ proposal calls for the use of technologies that would leverage the known locations of Wi-Fi hotspots, Bluetooth beacons and small cells to provide public-safety entities with dispatchable-address locations.

Barnett said there are many aspects of the carriers’ proposal that he supports in the long term, but there are many issues that would need to addressed before the carriers’ proposal could be implemented effectively. For instance, the carriers’ proposal depends largely on a National Emergency Address Database—a database with address information for Wi-Fi hotspots, beacons and other infrastructure—that does not exist today, he said.

“The FCC doesn’t have the authority to force Starbucks or Marriott or a local bookstore to [register their communication systems in the database],” Barnett said. “In my building alone, if you walk from door to door, your phone will show numerous Wi-Fi locations. When people move, they take [their Wi-Fi infrastructure] with them. Who’s going to keep that [location database] updated?

“There is so much to be worked out on that. Can it be? Yes, but we’re talking about years. That is not a reason to supplant these [proposed FCC] rules.”