NEXTEL CALLS FOR REMOVAL OF ‘RETROACTIVE’ E911 DEADLINE
NEW ORLEANS -- Nextel top brass here called Sun. for removal of the FCC’s deadline for 95% of wireless handsets to be Enhanced 911 Phase 2-ready by end of 2005. The carrier has met the Commission’s interim benchmark dates for selling new Phase 2 handsets, but the problem is a final 2005 deadline that would require carriers retroactively to ensure that 95% of all handsets in their subscriber base met Phase 2 automatic location capabilities, Nextel Senior Vp-Chief Regulatory Officer Robert Foosaner said. He said the rules were put in place when industry conditions were far different than today’s and a final mandate shouldn’t be retroactive if carriers met dates for selling new equipment.
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Nextel officials said concerns about the 2005 deadline were shared by other carriers and that no decision had been made about how to approach the FCC to request suspension of the 2005 date. At a briefing for reporters and analysts on the eve of the CTIA Wireless 2003 show here, executives said the FCC rules were based on an annual industry subscriber growth rate of 20-25%. Those rates have changed as the economy has slowed, they said. The challenge centers on how to handle stranded customers who wouldn’t have upgraded handsets by the final deadline for compliance.
“Bob [Foosaner] and others across the industry have been making very good progress working with certain agencies and the PSAPs [public safety answering points] to see if we can’t come to a common agreement,” Nextel CEO Timothy Donahue said. “I'm extremely, extremely hopeful that that will be the case.”
Noting that annual subscriber growth was up to 25% when the FCC’s E911 rules were crafted, Foosaner said: “I'm sorry, the economy just hasn’t held that way, which means there are going to be a lot of people out there that we're going to have choices we make with what we do with them or they're going to have to buy new equipment.” The problem, in other words, is how to handle customers who wouldn’t have switched out to new equipment by the deadline and whether they should be forced to buy new handsets to meet that deadline. This isn’t an issue when customers switch to new carriers and have to buy new phones or for first-time wireless subscribers.
Interim benchmark dates that the FCC has implemented, which require that a certain percentage of new handsets be Phase 2 compliant by a particular date, are “perfectly appropriate,” Foosaner said. “Nextel should and is responding to PSAP requests where they can receive the information,” he said. “We think the end date, which would have a retroactive applicability and which could cost our customers an astronomical amount of funds, must be removed.”
Foosaner said Nextel hadn’t had an E911-related complaint from any PSAP. “That doesn’t mean we have given everybody everything they want. We have given them everything that’s capable of being given,” he told reporters after the briefing. The original end date for 95% handset compliance was based on a period when average churn (customer turnover rate) was higher, Foosaner said. High churn means more customers would be coming in and out of a carrier’s subscriber base and having to buy new equipment, including gear that must meet Phase 2 rules: “Nextel never has high churn. So because we serve our customers better, we are going to be hurt by it.” He said the 95% target for Phase 2 had been based on growth rates that were about double what they are now. The 95% deadline was developed when industry churn rates were about 5% per year, Foosaner said, which helped because a much higher percentage of customers would be switching to new carriers and having to buy upgraded equipment. At lower churn rates, the rate of switchover to new equipment was proportionally lower, he said.