WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission said late Friday it is giving rural wireless carriers a chance to make their case why they can’t abide by the enhanced 911 rules.
“Tier III (less than 500,000 subscribers) carriers seeking further extensions or other relief from certain E911 requirements were granted a temporary stay of not more than six months. Tier III carriers with pending waiver petitions were given one month to supplement their filings before the FCC begins to rule on the merits of those requests,” said the commission. “As the case-by-case review process moves forward, the FCC expects carriers to continue to roll out E911 services as quickly and efficiently as possible.”
Rural carriers–many 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 non-compliance with compliance. 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. Nationwide carriers take advantage of the averaging component of the law to counteract where their networks are not as 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.
