FCC Investigating Major Carriers Compliance With Z-Axis Deadline

They're required to certify deployment by June 2. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile asked for 18-month waivers of the requirement (see 2103050043). Public safety groups opposed delays (see 2011040032). “Today we are taking action to ensure that wireless providers deliver on their public safety obligations,” acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said: “The FCC adopted comprehensive rules to improve location information for 911 wireless calls back in 2015. But there has been too little progress since then, and I have consistently called on this agency to do more to ensure that our rules are delivering actionable information.” Accurate location information “is critical in emergency situations,” a Verizon spokesperson said: “It is a priority we share. But in this case there are technical requirements that are outside of our control.” Verizon will “continue to work constructively with the Commission and public safety stakeholders to achieve our common goals in the months ahead,” the spokesperson said. “We have spent years and significant resources to improve 911 by providing public safety accurate latitude and longitude information to locate a caller’s address,” said an AT&T spokesperson: “We continue to work with the FCC, our industry partners and public safety to help locate 911 callers in multi-story buildings by adding vertical location information that meets or exceeds accuracy benchmarks.” T-Mobile didn’t comment Friday. In a waiver request, AT&T said its “compliance depends in large part on the actions of others” and “on events outside of any party’s control.” Verizon and T-Mobile also said failure to meet the deadline was beyond their control (see here and here).