911 Road Map Has Broad Support, CTIA Says

four major carriers, APCO and the National Emergency Number Association proposed the plan last month. “Public safety representatives and agencies from across the country eager for dispatchable location,” technology companies, members of the accessibility community and the “national carriers and wireless associations including those that represent small carriers” all support the plan, CTIA said in reply comments filed in docket 07-114, posted by the FCC Wednesday. “The Roadmap is a concrete, carefully-negotiated and -balanced solution to help deliver new and better E911 location accuracy,” CTIA said. “To be clear, however, the Roadmap is intended to function as an alternative -- not a supplement -- to the proposed standards and timetables in the Commission’s NPRM.” TruePosition, which offers an alternative solution for indoor location accuracy, however, said it's hardly a “consensus” plan. It's “opposed by the vast majority of public safety officials who have participated in this proceeding” and “there is scant evidence that the Plan would actually work,” TruePosition said. The carriers just want to “postpone fixing” a problem they caused to begin with, the company said: “The premise of the Roadmap is that if the FCC will simply leave the carriers alone they will someday fix the problem of poor indoor location capabilities for emergency 911 calls.” Officials with Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing reported on a meeting at the FCC. The FCC should look at the road map and other solutions, advocates for the group said. “We want the same capacity we had when we had the landline phones,” the officials said. “During those days, all we had to do was to dial 9-1-1, and help would come, with much success. When we call for an emergency, the first objective is for the dispatcher to get our call, and immediately know where the call came from. Then the dispatcher can send police, fire, or paramedics to the scene of the emergency.” “The Roadmap outlines a clear path to delivering first responders the necessary ‘dispatchable location’ information in an accelerated timeframe,” PCIA said in its reply comments. The plan also “leverages technologies that have been proven successful in commercial location services,” like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, “rather than proprietary technologies without a commercial track record,” the group said. The road map was “the result of tough negotiations between APCO and NENA, on the one hand, and the Carrier Signatories, on the other,” AT&T told the FCC. APCO acknowledged the complaints of some 20 public safety commenters left out of negotiations on the road map. “Since finalizing the Roadmap, APCO has reached out extensively, and will continue to do so, to describe the Roadmap to all interested stakeholders and respond to any questions,” the group said. “Further, APCO welcomes the active assistance of these groups to implement the Roadmap’s solutions to this complex problem.”