Introduction

Day 1

Day 2

FCC, Congress and ComCARE Alliance
Meet in Opening Session

• Phase I Selective Routing: Worth the Trouble? exclusive!
• FCC Faces Criticism from Congressional Aide

In the opening session of the E911 Wireless Emergency Services conference, about 75 attendees heard representatives of the Federal Communications Commission, Congress and the ComCARE Alliance discuss the sometimes controversial issues of handling E911 calls using wireless devices.

About 68 registered delegates, 28 of them from companies representing the telecommunications industry, met in the Hildago center of the Plaza San Antonio Hotel, just south of the Alamo, after having a continental breakfast in a nearby portico surrounded by a Texas winter fog.

The opening of the conference was modified by the absence of chair Steven Proctor of the State of Utah, keynote speaker Rep. Bill Tauzin (R-La.), and opening address speaker Ricardo Martinez, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Instead, Steve Souder (Virg.) chaired the meeting, and opened by saying the gathering was attended by the "who's who of what's happening in 911." Souder noted that the combined experience of those attending was conservatively 800 years, and that despite that experience, everyone would be leaving the conference with even more knowledge. Souder noted the "phenomenal" impact of wireless on America, and particularly on the nation's 911 system.

The opening day was marked by some startling statistics presented by John Marengo, from the state of California, suggesting that Phase I selective is effective and may not be worth the time and money spent on implementing it.

FCC Overhaul

Ken Johnson, director of communications for Rep. Tauzin, said his boss was compelled to remain in Washington to attend President Clinton's state of the union speech, given just the night before. He told the group that Tauzin's two top priorities as chair of the House subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade & Consumer Protection would be creating a seamless public safety communications infrastructure, and, "a complete overhaul of the FCC from top to bottom."

Johnson said more Americans than should be are dying on the nation's highways, despite having the most advanced medical system in the world. He said the problem was the lack of an end-to-end system, which would help reduce response times to vehicle accidents.

But Johnson complained that local officials are not paying attention to the problem. "It's not a problem with technology today," Johnson said, "It's a political and funding problem." He said the nation has solved the wireline E911 issues and, "We intend to do the same thing when it comes to a national wireless infrastructure."

Johnson said the Rep. Tauzin frequently uses his subcommittee as a "bully pulpit" to prompt action, and that public safety would be one of the beneficiaries of that action.

Johnson then focused on several areas of public safety interest for upcoming legislation. He said Tauzin would focus on accident prevention programs, to create programs for reporting DUI drivers using wireless telephones. Last year's H.R. 3844 will be re-introduced to make 911 the universal emergency number throughout the country. Right now, Johnson explained, several states and regions have special numbers--such as *SP--that wireless users are forced to use when reporting emergencies.

"Local officials need to realize that we need a "no dead-zone" policy," Johnson told the group. He said that the expectations of safety-minded wireless users are not being met by today's patchwork of receiving antennas. He said that local officials misunderstood the provisions of H.R. 3844, believing that local control was pre-empted by the federal proposal. He explained that the law did not take any control away from local governing bodies, did not create a "czar" or provide a federal solution.

Next, Johnson said existing 911 systems need to be upgraded to handle the increasing volume of calls and the location data that will eventually move across the system. "We don't need a national network," Johnson said, "but we need fund to make these changes." He said the federal government won't completely fund the upgrades, but rather "incentive" funding to local jurisdictions.

Johnson (left in photo) said public safety needs coordinated state policies and planning for 911 system, bringing together all of the transportation-related officials involved in making the highways safer--from hospitals, from road services, fire and police departments, etc.

As for liability protection, Johnson said parity with wired protection is "fair and logical." He said that physics prevents perfection when completing wireless 911 calls, and wireless carriers deserve protection for those calls they cannot complete. "H.R. 3844 simply provided parity," Johnson said. He added that, in some areas, one carrier provides both wired and wireless service, and that it doesn't make sense to provide different levels of liability protection for that company.

Johnson said there should be more funding for research and development into automatic crash notification (ACN) systems. He pointed out that 40 percent of accidents have a 20-minute response time by emergency units. In rural areas, the response time to accidents is even worse--it averages more than 50 minutes.

Johnson mentioned that vehicle manufacturers are developing standards for data formats to carry crash detection data. He said they should also develop standard ports to allow portable wireless phone users to plug in their phones when traveling, and to have crash data transmitted via the portable.

"We will pass a bill in this session of the legislature," Johnson promised. But he added, "You need to do your parts as well." He said public safety experts should educate their local officials on the issues. "Every day that we wait, more lives are needlessly lost," Johnson warned.

ComCARE Alliance

David Aylward is director of the multi-member ComCARE Alliance, which is pushing to "connect the dots" of the nation's public safety communications system, to improve response times to vehicle accidents. It's current push is through the FCC to implement so-called "strongest signal" wireless E911 handling.

Aylward noted that his group brings together several groups that don't normally cooperate--public safety agencies, hospital and medical officials, and wireless carriers. He advised public safety officials that they're not the only ones interested in helping them improve 911. "There are a lot of people outside of your world that care about the issues."

He echoed other speakers to say that the solution to improving 911 is "not rocket science." Instead, he said, "The marketplace is already doing this stuff. We just need to tie it together." He explained that there are public safety answering points, wireless phones, hospitals and medical teams, emergency first responders, wireless carriers, and automatic crash notification systems. But there is not effective way to tie them together.

Aylward (left in photo) said, "We need serious high-level support for public safety. We're not getting it from the FCC. We're not getting it from the governors. He said there was a lot of finger-pointing by those involved, so most of the decisions are being made in the private sector or by local officials. But he urged more education for local officials, too. "Look who's missing from this room--no mayors, no elected officials." He asserted,"There aren't five mayors in the country that understand this." He then laughed and added, "And two of them are in Harris County (Tex.)!"

Aylward said the FCC could do a lot of things on their own, without a legislative mandate. "We're going to talk to them," Aylward promised.

"Where is the FCC leadership on liability parity?" Aylward asked. He said, "The total failure of timely implementation of Phase I should tell us something." He said that without liability protection, carriers have been reluctant to install Phase I systems.

"There's a really important vision here," Aylward said. "Let's not forget about it this week."

FCC Viewpoint

Dan Grosh, senior attorney with the FCC's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, gave the delegates an update on the regulatory issues involving wireless 911. He assured the group that the FCC recognizes the importance of wireless 911, including the rules on Phase II capabilities. But he admitted that the commission felt that once the rules were passed, "you could hit the snooze button, wake up in October 2001, and everything would be in place."

As for Phase I, Grosh said most PSAPs don't have the capabilities. "We're still trying to understand just what the reasons for that are," he said. He agreed with other presenters that the technology is available, and added that carriers have been slow to implement Phase I features.

Having taken some criticism from earlier speakers, Grosh asked what the FCC's role should be. He said the commission is essential a "rules committee," but remains neutral on technology. Rather, the carriers and other vested interests are left to decide how certain wireless features are implemented. "We've been poised to be a referee," Grosh said, "and blow the whistle on infractions." That position is not one that promotes public safety directly, said Grosh, but is encourages the best technology to solve problems, which is best way to save lives.

He asked delegates to take a careful and limited view of the FCC's authority in matters related to wireless E911. He said it's a "significant issue" whether the FCC can tell PSAPs what to do, and predicted that, "We'll continue to see more questions about what areas the FCC should regulate and which we should stay out of." Grosh said he frequently hears complaints from public safety officials that the FCC needs to be more active. Yet he also hears the comment, "Regulate the other guy.

Grosh said he hopes the recent declaratory order by the FCC in response to questions raised by California 911 officials helps move the state closer to Phase I and II. He's heard that Phase I features have been installed in fewer than two percent of PSAPs.

Audience Questions

During a question and answer period, Grosh was asked a question about the FCC's responsiveness to the public safety community. A delegate said that, since William Kennard was appointed chair of the FCC, periodic meetings with public safety officials have stopped. Grosh said it's possible the FCC should hold more meetings and promised to work better with public safety.

At that point Ken Johnson energetically took to the microphone to answer the delegate's question. "The FCC doesn't know what it's doing and where it's going," Johnson asserted. He said the commission was a "horse and buggy" era agency, and "That's why we want to reform it."

Johnson said the FCC believes in a "one size fits all" when it formulate policy. He said that Rep. Tauzin has no intention of abolishing the FCC, but wants to give it a "fundamental restructuring." Lest the audience misunderstand, Johnson quickly added that he had no criticism of the lower level employees in the FCC. He praised all of the hard work, commitment and understanding of public safety's problem.

Johnson said that under the H.R. 3844 legislation, there would be up to $2 billion in revenues obtained from federal site licensing, which would be funneled back to local agencies via block grants.

LA Wireless Trial

In perhaps the most interesting presentation of the day, John Marengo of California's Department of General Services presented the results of a Phase I selective routing test in the Pasadena area involving several wireless carriers. The trial started last August 24th.

Preliminary statistics show that Phase I selective routing is of limited value, and that other measures are required to tackle the swell of wireless E911 calls. That is, despite all the money spent on equipment and software upgrades, and the time taken to determine routing for each antenna sector, most of the wireless E911 calls still ended up being handled by the California Highway Patrol (CHP).

Marengo explained that by law, the CHP handles all wireless 911 calls in the state. But that has put a tremendous burden on dispatchers there as wireless 911 calls have soared to over 3 million a year, an 8,000% increase from 1985.

In the Pasadena test, four cellular and PCS carriers, six PSAPs and four database providers cooperated to accept 911 calls within a 63 square-mile area. Officials examined each antenna site within the area and made call routing decisions. Because of state law, the cellular carriers declined to actually route according to those decisions, but the installed equipment could keep track of where the call would have been routed if the carriers had decided to participate. All of the PCS 911 calls were selectively routed.

The test area included 247 radio sectors composed of 92 PCS sectors (all digital) and 115 cellular sectors. Most of the sectors covered two or more jurisdictions.

In preliminary statistics, which Marengo said would not change for the final report issued in about two months, 77% of all calls would have been routed to the CHP. Of the 13% of calls that were routed to one of the local agencies, 24% were transferred to the CHP for handling. That would raise the overall CHP call routing to 80%. The CHP transferred out about 15% of calls, bring the CHP call handling total to about 69%. (diagram)

The figures includes PCS calls that were actually selectively routed, and the theoretically routing of cellular calls that were made from within the test area.

By the way, Marengo said they encountered only a 0.33% rate of E911 wireless calls from uninitialized phones during the trial.

The LA trials showed that call-takers like the callback number displayed (ANI), that the cell site location description is of "questionable and limited value" to the call-takers, that selective routing does network well in metro areas, that non-initialized callers are not a big problem, and that, "Phase I implementations can be costly."

Marengo said his final report, due in about two months, will show that Phase I alone won't solve California's wireless 911 problems, and implementation should be studied on a case-by-case basis. The state should move to Phase II as soon as possible, as x-y coordinates are the only effective way to implement selective routing in metro areas.

Marengo said other solutions should be considered, including public education on how to use E911 effectively when calling from a wireless phone, providing interactive voice response (IVR) and text-to-speech features for 911 callers ("You're number nine in line...." or "The accident on westbound Interstate 80 at the Davis exit has been reported."), increase call-taker staffing during busy hours, and sharing the wireless E911 load among the state's 475 PSAPs.

On that last point, Marengo acknowledged the potential political problems in routing wireless calls to nearby, non-involved comm centers. But he called the state's local PSAPs an "untapped resource" that could be used to handle the inevitable call spikes that are generated by mobile, and usually highway-related, incidents.

Marengo said the trial cost about $1 million, mostly for carrier software upgrades. Based on these figures, Marengo estimated that a state-wide Phase I solution would costs as follows:

$1 million one-time for enhanced MF trunks

$1 million a year for trunk costs

$10 million a year for 911 network access costs

$1 million one-time for database administration

$5 million for CPE upgrades