WASHINGTON-The introduction of a wireless E911 bill in the Senate has been complicated by
controversy over the ComCare Alliance’s push for federal funding and public-safety provisions stripped out of the bill
passed by the House last month.
The removal of those provisions and efforts to re-insert them in a coming Senate
bill, according to industry sources, have caused strains in the increasingly fragile coalition of wireless carriers, health-
care providers, 911 emergency dispatchers, E911 providers and public-safety officials.
Aside from the bill, the
coalition already has been rocked by differences over technology choices for rolling out E911 position location after
2000.
Wireless carriers and others fear that bulking up the Senate E911 bill being crafted by Senate Commerce
Committee John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), chairman of the communications subcommittee,
will only invite trouble.
That faction wants a narrow, relatively noncontroversial E911 bill, like the one
overwhelmingly approved by the House in late February.
The wireless industry, concerned that opposition from
local officials and the National Park Service once again might kill E911 legislation, agreed to the removal of a federal
land antenna-siting provision that would have been the funding source (from site fees) for public safety answering point
upgrades and automatic crash notification technology development.
Instead, the wireless industry and its allies
reluctantly settled for a less ambitious bill that makes 911 the universal emergency telephone number and gives
wireless carriers limited liability protection on par with wireline carriers.
“We’re very heartened that Sen.
Burns and Sen. McCain have expressed a lot of interest in moving forward on the safety agenda,” said Steven
Berry, top lobbyist for the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
The biggest potential obstacle to
Senate passage of a House-like E911 bill is from Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) on the liability issue.
Hollings,
ranking minority Commerce Committee member and a recipient of strong campaign fiance support from lawyers,
contributed to the bill’s demise last year after raising concerns about the liability provision. But, unlike last year,
Hollings is not up for re-election and does not appear to have support for his cause.
While the slimmed-down House
bill gives wireless carriers a big-ticket item they dearly need-legal cover-it doesn’t address some emergency dispatch
center issues. PSAPs, under the old E911 bill, stood to receive millions of dollars in state and federal grants.
The
combination of losing funding for ACN development and PSAP modernization appears to have disheartened health-
care professionals of the ComCare Alliance, which early on joined wireless carriers and others in publicly backing the
bill.
ComCare, partially funded by the cellular industry and effective in putting a human face on a bill that originally
would have done as much for emergency medicine as for industry, now apparently believes public-safety
improvements gutted from the House bill should be put back on the table.
The question is whether that can be done
in one bill or incrementally in multiple bills.
David Aylward, executive director of ComCare, has been working with
intelligent highway system specialists to find federal transportation funds for E911-related
implementation.
“The leaders of intelligent transportation systems are accustomed to the use of transportation
funds for communications related to public safety and highway communications,” said Aylward. “What
they (transportation policy makers) are coming increasingly to see and what wireless carriers and PSAPs are beginning
to see is the integration of emergency communications-especially E911-into transportation
communications.”
Mark Johnson, of ITS America, agrees.
“We see this synergy between the 911
side and the transportation side,” said Johnson, whose nonprofit organization provides policy advice to the
Department of Transportation.
