FCC Urged to Exercise Caution in Report to Congress on 911 Wi-Fi Use
Industry and the National Emergency Number Association agreed the FCC needs to do more work before reporting to Congress on feasibility and cost of making Wi-Fi access points and other communications technologies available for access to 911 during times of…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
emergency. Replies on a Public Safety Bureau notice were due Friday in docket 20-285. The FCC must file a report as a requirement of Ray Baum’s Act. “In light of the significant technical and security issues raised in this proceeding about relying on Wi-Fi access points as a backup for wireless 9-1-1, the FCC should seek the guidance of relevant technical expert bodies on these issues prior to submitting its study to Congress,” CTIA said. Access points supported by fixed wireline are “just as challenged as mobile wireless services to remain operational during severe emergencies,” it said: “Other Commission proceedings demonstrate the increasing resilience of mobile wireless networks even where fixed wireline backhaul and commercial power is unavailable for extended periods of time.” Connecting through access points “appears to be technically feasible, but work must be done to ensure quality assurance to 9-1-1 and to its callers,” NENA commented. Such connections “must meet, at the very least, the public’s expectations for reliability and service; meeting these expectations may be challenging absent regulatory authority,” the group said. ACA Connects said it’s not “technically feasible” today to use Wi-Fi “to provide a backup path to 911 when mobile networks are down.”