WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission has changed the rules on how a non-service initialized mobile phone must be identified to a public-safety answering point.
“The standard recommended by the Emergency Services Interconnection Forum provides a powerful solution, which will allow 911 callers-many facing urgent, life-and-death situations-to provide a callback number to 911 call centers when relying on a non-service initialized or 911-only wireless phone,” said Susan Miller, president and chief executive officer of the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions. ESIF is an ATIS subcommittee.
In the event that a 911 call is cut off, PSAPs were concerned that non-service initialized phones made it difficult for PSAPs to call the 911 caller back to verify and determine the extent of the emergency because the phone was not attached a specific telephone number.
Originally, the FCC had said that non-service initialized and 911-only phones needed to be programmed with a series of consecutive numbers to alert the PSAP that the call was coming from a phone that could not be called back. ESIF pointed out to the FCC that this would needlessly use global roaming numbers. The new rules call for the phones to be programmed to read 911 plus a seven-digit number that will indicate it is from a non-service initialized or 911-only phone. The new rules should be effective in about six months.
