It’s official: The FCC’s (News - Alert) Public Safety Bureau issued a recommendation to include Next Generation 9-1-1 as part of the Commission’s obligation with the National Broadband Plan.
“The first call for help from a citizen in an emergency situation is to 9-1-1 with an expectation that help will arrive quickly,” according to officials of Intrado (News - Alert), which provides the core of the 9-1-1 infrastructure. Yet “recent studies indicate that 76 percent of consumers believe 9-1-1 can locate them regardless of the communications device they use.”
As part of the same presentation last Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported, Federal Communications Commission officials “laid out a series of priorities for U.S. broadband development, calling for faster broadband speeds to schools and technology to allow consumers to monitor their electricity usage at home via the Internet.”
The Journal reported that the moves are part of “a month-long effort to explain the agency’s National Broadband Plan, which was funded by economic-stimulus funds and is expected to be hundreds of pages long.”
The plan is due on March 17 and “is expected to serve as a framework guiding federal efforts to improve U.S. broadband service. The plan will underpin a series of new rules, including overhaul of an $8 billion federal phone-subsidy program and improving the readability of consumers’ Internet bills,” the Journal said.
The problem with the emergency call network, of course, is that the existing legacy 9-1-1 network was designed for older phones. To rectify that, Intrado officials say the FCC should “continue to move aggressively to establish a plan for a national framework that facilitates the transition to a next generation IP 9-1-1 emergency communications network.”
Without the inclusion of next generation 9-1-1 into the plan, they warn, “our nation’s public safety emergency network will continue to lag behind consumer communications technology and fail to meet citizens’ expectations regarding their use of text, photos or videos.”
Specifics aside, experts say the federal government's help is absolutely critical to developing a national E911 plan and system.
“Without either a clear mandate at the federal level forcing an upgrade or clear forward-thinking, policy-making and funding activity at the state and local level, the vision of NG9-1-1 may take a very long time to realize in implementation,” Bill Mertka, vice president of product management for RedSky Technologies, Inc., a Chicago-based E911 solutions provider, told TMCnet. Mertka also is involved in several efforts overseen by NENA.
“The technical issues are miniscule compared to funding and political concerns,” he said.
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.
Edited by Michael Dinan
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