WASHINGTON—The telecommunications industry and policy-makers need to establish a different way of funding enhanced 911 systems especially because these networks are moving to Internet Protocol-based systems, the FCC’s Network Reliability and Interoperability Council was told Thursday.
“The current system is not providing enough funding for even the upgrade for wireless E911. If we want an upgrade to IP, there must be serious changes to the way funding is done,” said Jim Nixon, director of government affairs for T-Mobile USA Inc.
NRIC, made up of industry executives, has been meeting for more than a decade to collect data on and examine solutions to network outages. Its portfolio of issues has increased steadily and grown more important with the advent of homeland security. The seventh iteration of NRIC is focusing on the E911 network.
One NRIC subcommittee is evaluating recent E911 system outages to determine if following already-established best practices would have prevented the outage. The first step in the process was deciding which outages were E911 outages.
“There were some like me that said any time the phone is out and you can’t dial 911, it impacts 911, but the decision was to only examine outages that directly impacted 911,” said Robert Oenning, state 911 program administrator for the state of Washington.
There are 97 out of 776 NRIC best practices that are directly linked to E911, said Nancy Pollock, executive director of the Metropolitan 911 Board of the Greater Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minn., Area, but the subcommittee is discovering that some general best practices are also important.
“Approximately 13 percent of the best practices directly impact E911, but many of the other best practices impact the network,” said Pollack.
