mobloc8

Companies offering internet-based phone services in the US have been given just 120 days to ensure that their lines provide access to the emergency services, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled last week.

Source.

There are going to be a lot of problems with this mandate, and it’s likely to stifle the development and deployment of VoIP technology. A cynic might think that that’s what the incumbent telcos want - a few more years of being able to charge inflated fees for telephone services before voice becomes just another service delivered over broadband and metered by the megabyte.

Meanwhile, other countries will continue to pull ahead of the US in this area.

The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials International (APCO) has complained to the FCC about Vonage’s proposed interim method of handling E911 VoIP calls.

Vonage is proposing to route E911 VoIP calls to the 10-digit administrative number of the nearest PSAP, until they can get a proper E911 solution running.

APCO is taking the position that all new technologies such as VoIP should be required to support E911 properly. Expecting PSAPs to respond to emergency calls on administrative numbers disrupts and strains their limited resources.

Source.

TruePosition today announced a hosted solution for wireless location, designed to help rural carriers meet the FCC’s E911 Phase II requirements.

This type of hosted solution is great for smaller wireless carriers, as it helps them avoid the upfront capital cost of mobile location infrastructure. It also removes the ongoing burden of maintenance and operation of the equipment.

This particular service seems to rely primarily on the network-based U-TDOA (Uplink Time Difference Of Arrival) location technology.

Source.

If you want to know more about how the FCC’s wireless Enhanced 911 (E911) rules work, the best place to start is at their own web site.

There you’ll find information on previous and upcoming hearings and statements, reports, press releases, waivers and more. They also make available Phase II quarterly reports for most carriers (some carriers are not required to lodge reports), so you can check up how each one is doing in their deployment of E911 services.

From RCR Wireless News.

The FCC granted 32 whole or partial waivers for rural wireless carrier enhanced 911 Phase II obligations, and denied or dismissed eight other requests. That makes a total of 175 whole or partial waivers for rural carriers over the past nine years.

A big problem for rural carriers is that they don’t have the density of phone towers to make network-based triangulation techniques feasible.

From BusinessWire.

TechnoCom Corporation(R), a leading provider of wireless location Operations Support Systems (OSS) and Business Support Systems (BSS), today announced that Triton PCS, a leading operator of wireless services, has purchased the LocatePredict(TM) platform to optimize the deployment of its wireless location infrastructure.

The optimization and planning software will allow Triton PCS to cost effectively deploy its network-based E911 location technologies to yield the optimal accuracy performance based on the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) E911 mandate.

LocatePredict is a wireless location system design and planning platform for GSM and TDMA that supports a range of network and handset-based location technologies including TDOA, AOA, E-OTD and RF signature systems, as well as hybrids of these technologies. It provides the user with easy-to-grasp graphical predictions and quantitative statistics based on rigorous models and extensive verification through empirical field testing.

E-OTD Whitepaper from ZDNet.

E-OTD is one of a small number of location determination technologies adopted by US cellular operators to meet the FCC E-911 mandate. In E-OTD, the mobile handset or device performs the calculation to determine its location based on signals received from cellular base stations. However, those operators in the US who have adopted E-OTD in their GSM networks have so far been unable to meet the FCC’s location performance requirements and have been granted more time to make E-OTD work.

Even this extra time may not be enough, because neither the cellular operators nor their technology suppliers appear to have identified the root cause(s) of E-OTD’s problems, and hence there is no timescale or budget to fix them. AT&T Wireless has already raised the possibility that even the extension which the FCC has granted it may not be enough. E-OTD’s problems are now causing alarm in the emergency services community, and there are calls from some bodies for the technology to be scrapped. Meanwhile, in Europe no operators have plans for a full implementation of E-OTD in their networks.

From America’s Network.

The FCC appears to be standing firm on their Dec 31, 2005 deadline for wireless carriers to implement E911 solutions.

Sprint, Nextel Communications and Verizon Wireless are pursuing handset-based solutions, while Cingular Wireless and T-Mobile USA are pursuing network-based solutions.

According to NENA:

• 71.5% of the 3,135 counties in the US have implemented Phase I
• 33.8% of counties have implemented Phase II
• 73.4% of the 6,166 public safety answering points (PSAPs) have implemented Phase I
• 40.5% of PSAPs have implemented Phase II

There are still issues with getting Tier 3 carriers (mostly rural) to meet the deadline. The biggest obstacle appears to be cost. Several groups of Tier 3 carriers have banded together into the “Tier III Coalition” to lobby for exemption from the FCC requirements.