The FCC late Thurs. turned down challenges by wireless carriers t...

that changes in its rules didn’t substantively alter carriers’ obligations under the E911 rules and that adequate notice had been given. The changes involved the so-called Richardson, Tex., order, in which Richardson originally had asked the FCC to spell out when PSAP requests for E911 Phase 2 service were valid. The agency said such requests were valid if any upgrades needed on a PSAP network would be completed within 6 months and if a PSAP had made a timely request to an LEC for trunking and other facilities. Cingular and Sprint PCS had asked the FCC to address their concerns about their obligations if a PSAP’s readiness to receive Phase 2 data were delayed. Instead of granting their petition for more stringent criteria to substantiate a PSAP request, the FCC included certain time frames and procedures clarifying the obligations of each party. They included a 15-day window after a PSAP service request was entered, during which a carrier could request documentation. T-Mobile USA, Nextel and Cingular Wireless challenged those changes, arguing that the FCC hadn’t adequately considered the complexities of when a PSAP or wireless operator was ready to deploy Phase 2 caller location information. “We disagree with Cingular that the Commission ‘cloaked’ its decisions as a clarification where none was needed and ‘conjured up an ambiguity even though none existed,'” the FCC said. “Rather, the Commission’s action was required to overcome the impasse that ensued when T- Mobile denied Richardson’s service request as invalid because Richardson was not fully capable of receiving and using the data at the time of its request,” the agency said. Comr. Martin supported the order but said in a separate statement he was concerned with its analysis of the FCC’s compliance with a U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., decision in Sprint v. FCC. That ruling held that the Commission had failed to provide proper notice for a rule clarification under the Administrative Procedure Act when its only notice was a bureau-level public notice, he wrote. “In this order, we conclude that a Bureau-level public notice did provide adequate notice, because, unlike in Sprint, the notice was published in the Federal Register and contained an initial regulatory flexibility analysis,” Martin said. “While I think this analysis is not unreasonable, we should avoid these issues. Ultimately, the Commission itself is responsible for the actions taken by the agency.” A better future course is to issue Commission-level notices, he said. “A full Commission-level notice is the vehicle explicitly called for by Sprint and would plainly satisfy the court’s concerns.”