WASHINGTON-Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), co-chairs of the E911 Congressional Caucus, introduced a bill that will provide state grants to deploy wireless enhanced 911 service and will withhold those funds from states that divert E911 charges on telecom bills for other purposes.
“State legislators cannot divert those funds for other purposes,” said Burns. “If we can provide the funds and give the flexibility to the states for this purpose, we will find there is a lot of imagination out there.”
To ensure states that are diverting funds cannot apply for the E911 grants, states must certify twice each year to the Federal Communications Commission that funds are not being diverted.
Grant preference would be given to those states and localities whose applications show coordination with public-safety answering points and that use commercial and public-safety services.
Clinton said she was not worried about local governments diverting funds because it has been the local public-safety agencies that have been clamoring for finances to deploy service.
“We are in a kind of political squeeze play here. We have the local people who are adamant about this and that is why I frankly don’t worry about the counties because I think they are chafing at the bit to get going,” said Clinton. “We are going to get this done. We know the problems the states have. I understand that very well. This money has been diverted in many instances to projects and expenditures that are all important, but that is not the point. The point is the money should have gone where it was intended to go and this bill is aimed at getting that done.”
The bill would also create a federal task force, to be known as the Emergency Communications Task Force, and led by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Members of the task force would include the departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Defense, Interior, and Transportation, the FCC, state and local first responders, and telecom industry representatives.
While a core component of the E911 Emergency Communications Act of 2003 is the matching grants for E911 implementation, the bill will only authorize the money. The funds must then be appropriated-or included-in the federal budget.
“We have put together a bill that we think has the main components in it. We believe it can have bi-partisan support in the Senate and can actually get passed. There is a thing called the conference committee. If the House decides to do something a little bit differently, obviously we are going to sit down. But the important goal for us is to get this passed,” said Clinton. “It is going to take some time to get it implemented. It is going to take some time to get the money authorized and then appropriated. We want to get on the road with this. I hope that whatever comes out of the House will be compatible enough and noncontroversial enough that we can try and get a bill to the president this year and get on the road with this.”
Similar legislation in the House is expected to be introduced later this summer, said a staffer for Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), co-chair of the E911 Congressional Caucus.
The Shimkus bill, which is expected to be co-sponsored by Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), the other co-chair of the caucus, is expected to have a provision to help rural carriers.
Rural carriers contend that deploying E-911 services on the schedule established by the FCC will mean that underserved and nonserved areas will not be built out.
In addition, rural carriers-most of which chose TDMA technology for their digital networks-cannot meet the compliance requirements using their network-based solutions because they do not have an urban core to average noncompliance with compliance.
Nationwide carriers take advantage of the averaging component of the law to counteract where their networks are not fully built out. For rural carriers, this is more complicated because towers have been built along roads in a “string of pearls” fashion, making triangulation difficult, if not impossible. Handset manufacturers backed away from an E911 solution for TDMA when the nationwide carriers began migrating off that air interface.
Shimkus would like to help relax the E911 compliance standards for rural carriers, said his staffer.
Language relieving the wireless carrier of the Nov. 24 mandate to implement wireless local number portability will not be part of the bill. Shimkus said last week at a House hearing that he believes E911 should be the priority and carriers should be given relief from the wireless LNP mandate, but his staffer said wireless LNP will not be included in the bill.
This is bound to be disappointing to the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, which has put a lot of lobbying muscle behind getting the wireless LNP mandate lifted. At a press conference following the Burns/Clinton event on Thursday, CTIA President Thomas Wheeler reiterated that the industry didn’t have the financial resources to do both E911 and wireless LNP at the same time.
The FCC is also not likely to be any help. FCC Chairman Michael Powell said he expected the wireless industry to do both. “We have to satisfy multiple priorities,” said Powell.
