WASHINGTON-Fears about the timely deployment of enhanced 911 Phase II service appear to be coming true even as the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission expressed optimism that the Oct.1 deadline will be met.
In the last week alone, one of the nation’s largest carriers filed a waiver request, various public-safety groups filed formal requests for Phase II deployment and another major carrier warned that no one would deploy Phase II by the deadline.
“We are still hopeful that the deadline will still be met. We will get waivers and look at them on a case-by-case basis [but we still believe the deadline will be] substantially met,” said FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell.
“Generally, the [FCC’s] rules may be waived when there is good cause shown and when `special circumstances warrant a deviation from the general rule, and such a deviation will serve the public interest.’ In the context of the Phase II E911 rules, the [FCC] has recognized that there may be instances in which `technology-related issues,’ or `exceptional circumstances’ make it impossible for a wireless carrier to deploy Phase II by Oct.1, and individual waivers could be granted in these circumstances,” said AT&T Wireless Services Inc. in a waiver request filed Thursday.
“In order for you to begin preparing your facilities throughout the state now, we want to make you aware of our statewide plan. Our plan is to begin deploying Phase I and Phase II in Los Angeles County and continue to implement on a scheduled basis throughout California until the entire state has the benefit of wireless E911,” said Barry R. Hemphill, deputy director of the telecommunications division for the California Department of General Services, in a letter dated March 30 sent to all of the wireless carriers in California.
“There are major, major shortcomings with this entire Phase II mandate. … The nature of the technology that exists today does not meet the accuracy requirements. If anybody is telling you anything different, and everybody will, it’s not true. … None of this equipment can be installed in time to meet the FCC mandate [it] doesn’t matter whether we placed orders six months ago or a year ago. The point is if you’ve got equipment that doesn’t meet the accuracy mandate, carriers are not going to step up and start signing contracts and spend a lot of money to deploy equipment that doesn’t meet the accuracy mandate just so they can make a feeble attempt to meet the Oct. 1 FCC deadline. That just doesn’t make any sense at all. You will see come Oct. 1, perhaps even before Oct. 1, there is going to be serious problems implementing this technology either accuracy wise or deadline wise,” said Andrew Clegg, director of advanced technology for Cingular Wireless Inc.
The soon-to-be debacle with Phase II was previewed when Phase I service was not deployed on schedule. While the deadline for Phase I was April 1, 1998, Ken Arneson, president and chief executive officer of Xypoint Corp., estimated that only 11 percent of the country currently has Phase I capability. Joe Hanna, president of Directions and former president of the Association of Public-safety Communications Officials, said that number would be more than 50 percent if carriers fulfilled the pending requests from public safety answering points.
Phase I required carriers to supply a call-back number and cell-site location information to PSAPs. Phase II required more precise location information, depending on whether carriers chose a handset or network-based solution. Handset-based solutions must be able to locate the caller within 50 meters 67 percent of the time and within 150 meters 95 percent of the time. Network-based solutions must be able to locate the caller within 100 meters 67 percent of the time and within 300 meters 95 percent of the time. For carriers who chose a handset-based solution, carriers have until Oct. 1 to start selling handsets with automatic location information. The new schedule calls for 25 percent of all new handsets activated by Dec. 31 to be ALI-capable. This number rises to 50 percent on June 30, 2002 and to 100 percent on Dec. 31, 2002. Carriers who choose network-based options must deploy the solution within six months of a PSAP request.
AT&T files waiver petition
It was not surprising that AT&T Wireless filed its waiver; it had said it would do so in a letter filed with the FCC on Dec. 6. In its filing, AT&T made the commission aware of its plans to overlay a GSM system over its TDMA system in preparation for third-generation wireless and its impact on the deployment of 911 services.
“In its waiver filing, AT&T Wireless is offering the FCC a creative solution for bringing Phase II E911 simultaneously with the company’s introduction of the GSM air interface. The company’s plan is to build Phase II compatibility into the network and the handsets from day 1. The goal: no legacy of non-Phase II-compatible GSM infrastructure or handsets no Phase II E911 `haves’ and `have-nots’ on AT&T Wireless’ GSM network,” said a company spokesman.
AT&T is banking on the FCC approving its waiver because it approved an EOTD waiver for VoiceStream Wireless Corp., but this might not be as easy as it seems.
FCC Commissioners Gloria Tristani and Susan Ness already dissented from the majority decision to grant the VoiceStream waiver requiring the GSM carrier to comply with the network-based accuracy standard initially and then to come into full compliance with the more stringent handset standard within two years. APCO asked the commission to reconsider its decision and a staff recommendation on this is pending before the commissioners, said Kris Ann Monteith, chief of the policy division of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.
With former FCC Chairman William Kennard gone, it is believed that an APCO reconsideration petition to rescind the waiver is stalled at the commission level with a two-two vote. Ness and Tristani favor of the petition and Powell and FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth are believed to oppose it.
Monteith also said the FCC would not look kindly on a “me-too” waiver request. The waiver would have “to be tailored to demonstrate that they are in the same condition” as VoiceStream by presenting independent data, she said.
AT&T apparently tried to do this by filing confidential data that shows that vendor claims that their technology can meet the FCC’s mandate are inaccurate even as it referenced the Voice-Stream waiver in the second paragraph of its request.
Now that AT&T has filed, Cingular may not be far behind.
Clegg caused quite a stir when he confirmed that Cingular would soon file a waiver to allow it to deploy EOTD in its GSM network.
“You will be seeing very, very soon a change of technology for our GSM [since] we want to try to be in line with everyone else [in the GSM community],” said Clegg. Later he agreed with a conference participant that an “EOTD filing is reasonable.”
Clegg said Cingular has been testing EOTD. In fact, “we have tested every technology on every type of terrain,” he said.
Cingular uses both GSM and TDMA technologies in its footprint. Many analysts believe that Cingular will soon say that, like AT&T, it plans to overlay its TDMA markets with GSM in preparation for 3G.
The next day, Jonas Neihardt of Qualcomm Inc., hinted at the stir Clegg’s comments made when he said Cingular might not be headed down the EOTD waiver road.
“I don’t know if that is the last word on that. I know there have been some discussions” on that since Clegg’s statement, said Neihardt.
PSAPs lay cards on the table
The California letter was representative of a growing move among PSAPs to say “We’re ready; deploy Phase II.” PSAPs in Chicago and Dallas filed similar letters and New Jersey filed a statewide request last month.
This movement among PSAPs is a result of a battle that began when Phase I was not deployed in 1998. There are many reasons why Phase I
was not deployed but one most often cited by carriers is that even though they were ready the PSAPs were not. So now the PSAPs are saying they are ready and that when the Phase II deadline arrives Oct. 1, the PSAPs expect Phase II will be installed.
By PSAPs taking advantage of the 6-month rule, they are leaving the carriers with the option of either filing a waiver or meeting the mandate.
Phase II will not be deployed on time
With the PSAPs throwing down the gauntlet, Clegg’s statements made at last week’s conference on “Implementing Revenue Generating and E911 Compliant Wireless Location Solutions and Services” sponsored by the Institute for International Research caused quite a stir.
“We want to build location services because it saves lives!” exclaimed John Melcher, vice president of the National Emergency Number Association, at the end of a “fire and brimstone” lecture on the virtues and needs for precise location information.
Melcher urged the carriers to stop worrying about the letter of the rules and follow its spirit by deploying a large-scale system.
“Until you build a large-scale system … how can you say it doesn’t work. Maybe in the vendor’s labs, it works [so] you build it up and figure it out!” Melcher yelled.
Later on in the conference, various vendors talked about the values of their various technologies leading to a conclusion of not knowing really who to believe.
“We learned a number of things today. Number one you can and cannot meet the FCC’s rules. You both will and won’t be able to make money. It is easier to identify the closest Starbucks than to identify the correct PSAP,” said Jim Nixon, senior manager of regulatory affairs for VoiceStream Wireless Corp. and chair of the conference.
This is the situation the FCC faces every day, said Monteith but said carriers will be expected to meet the deadlines unless they can come up with real data that the various technologies do not work.
“The [FCC], as a regulatory body, relies on the representations of the parties that come before us so if a technology vendor comes before us and tells us his technology meets our accuracy standards and his technology will be available in the timeframe provided for under our rules, we take that technology vendor’s representations at face value and that is what we are basing our rules on. I heard Cingular say that they have done a lot of testing and based on its tests some of the technologies may not meet the FCC’s accuracy standards. I would love to have Cingular file that test data with us,” said Monteith.
