Public safety groups said a recent U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., ruli...

defined as nonnationwide and having fewer than 500,000 subscribers at the end of 2001.) In Nov., the Tier 3 Coalition petitioned the FCC to forbear from enforcing E911 Phase 2 location accuracy requirement until after Dec. 31, 2005. In an FCC filing Fri., the Assn. of Public Safety Communications Officials, National Assn. of State 911 Administrators and National Emergency Number Assn. cited the D.C. Circuit’s interpretation of “necessary” as it applied to the FCC’s statutory forbearance authority. The court rejected CTIA and Verizon Wireless challenges to the Commission’s decision to not grant forbearance on wireless LNP requirements. The public safety groups said the court hadn’t interpreted “necessary” as meaning a rule could be retained only if its enforcement was absolutely required to protect consumers. “Instead, it said that Congress’ intent in using the term in Section 160 was ‘not plain’ on the face of the statute, but must be evaluated in context,” they said. When it comes to forbearance, the court said it is reasonable to read “necessary” as involving a strong link between what the agency has done by way of regulation and what it permissibly sought to achieve with a regulation. “The connection between the permissible goals of saving lives and property through location of emergency callers and the accuracy standards that are means to these ends has only strengthened in the 7 years since the Phase 2 rules were adopted -- as those standards have proven achievable with current technology in many rural areas, by many smaller carriers,” the public safety groups said. They reiterated their argument that individual waivers were preferable to granting a blanket forbearance request to the smallest carriers.