Industry groups supported a March petition by the Competitive Carriers Association seeking tweaks to the FCC’s 911 outage reporting rules, approved 4-0 by commissioners last year (see 2211170051). APCO and the Boulder Regional Emergency Telephone Service Authority (BRETSA) opposed the petition in the initial comment round (see 2306270045). But most groups waited for the reply round to weigh in.

CTIA and member companies raised concerns about an FCC proposal that carriers more precisely route wireless 911 calls and texts to public safety answering points through location-based routing (LBR) (see 2212210047), in a meeting with staff from FCC Public Safety and Wireless bureaus. “As wireless providers take different approaches to implementing LBR, CTIA noted that a wireless providers’ obligation to use LBR should be premised upon a valid PSAP request that includes the provision of the shapefiles, which are necessary for wireless providers to tailor their networks to unique geographies and PSAP boundaries,” said a filing posted Monday in docket 18-64: “For these reasons, CTIA also noted that non-nationwide wireless providers should have more time to deploy LBR within their networks than proposed in the NPRM.” CTIA also offered counsel on rules for providing location information with next-generation text solutions. The group “encouraged the Commission to focus on the use of LBR for real-time text and ensure that wireless providers have the flexibility to implement LBR for text-to-911 in ways that are consistent with their unique network and handset configurations.” AT&T, Dish Network, Southern Linc, T-Mobile and Verizon participated in the meeting.

Maryland's Montgomery County alerted residents about 911 problems Friday. “Montgomery County Emergency Communications (911) is experiencing a Verizon wireless issue,” said a wireless alert from the county at around 9:30 a.m. “In case of an emergency, callers are asked to call their district stations. Verizon is aware and attempting to fix the problem.” A Verizon spokesperson said Friday morning that 911 calls were “going through for customers throughout the greater [District of Columbia] area and surrounding counties,” but there was “a remaining issue where caller ID and location information is not automatically transmitting to dispatchers in Charles, Montgomery, Prince George's and St. Mary's Counties.” Verizon “engineers are working tirelessly to get the issue resolved but customers can continue to use 911 in case of emergency,” the spokesperson said.

Minnesota is experiencing a surge of inadvertent 911 calls due to an update to Google’s Android mobile operating system, Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) said Thursday. The AG sent mail to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai about the problem, which permits Android’s emergency SOS feature to call 911 after five consecutive taps to the power button and gives the user a few seconds to cancel. The surge in calls is overwhelming 911 call centers and local law enforcement, said Ellison, urging Google to quickly resolve the problem. Minneapolis is receiving thousands more inadvertent calls each month, the AG said. “This problem has caused a tremendous drain on resources and the problem is only compounded by the increase in emergency calls during the summer months,” he said: “This is unacceptable.” Public reports say Google knows about the issue and is working on a fix, but the company hasn’t provided enough details, “including what the software fix entails, when it will be released or completed, and whether it will be tested with 911 centers before implementation,” said Ellison. Google didn’t comment Thursday.

A draft FCC order would update several E-rate rules to ensure tribal colleges and university libraries are eligible to receive program support, according to a draft released Thursday (see 2306280064) for consideration during the commissioners' July 20 open meeting. The agency in its draft 988 outage reporting order defended the reporting requirement as requiring nominal action, requiring only clicking on a checkbox in its national outage reporting system (NORS) to indicate if a reported outage potentially affects a 988 facility.

The FCC will consider additional steps to ensure tribal communities have access to E-rate funding during the agency's July 20 meeting, Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a note Wednesday. Rosenworcel circulated a proposal last week to allow the use of E-rate funds for Wi-Fi hot spots (see 2306260029). Also on the agenda are an order addressing local programming and proposed rules on reporting and notice requirements for 988 outages.

ATIS supported a March petition by the Competitive Carriers Association seeking tweaks to the FCC’s 911 outage reporting rules, approved 4-0 by commissioners last year (see 2211170051). Comments were due Monday in docket 15-80 (see 2306140057). ATIS’ Network Reliability Steering Committee “believes that it is infeasible to comply with the recently-adopted reporting rules” requiring carriers to provide 911 special facilities with all available material information they have about an outage within 30 minutes of discovery, said a filing posted Tuesday. “Until there is notification from a third-party (such as from a vendor or another service provider etc.), originating service providers would not know of an outage or its impact,” ATIS said: “Even after an originating service provider receives notification of an outage, 30 minutes is a challenging deadline. … In this very short window of time, providers likely will not know the root cause, the outage’s extent, or be able to estimate when service would be restored, and in some cases may not be able to identify the affected” public safety answering points. The Boulder Regional Emergency Telephone Service Authority opposed the petition. “If providers are unwilling or unable to monitor their systems and traffic, and timely report outages, then they should authorize or assign third-party network providers on which their services are dependent to provide outage notifications, and supply those third-party network providers the information they need to fully report the impact of the outage,” the Colorado agency said. APCO also opposed the reconsideration petition (see 2306260062).

FCC nominee Anna Gomez faced tough questions Thursday on net neutrality, data privacy, the Standard General/Tegna deal and how she would balance her current role leading the U.S. delegation in preparing for the World Radiocommunication Conference if she's confirmed to the FCC. The Senate Commerce Committee nomination hearing saw Commissioner Geoffrey Starks hit by many of the same questions on his nomination for a second term on the FCC. Commissioner Brendan Carr, also being renominated, and Fara Damelin, nominee for FCC inspector general, faced fewer questions.

The rollout of next-generation 911 to public safety answering points remains at the top of the agenda for the National Emergency Number Association and its members, CEO Brian Fontes said in an interview. NENA's annual meeting is this week in Grapevine, Texas. Fontes warned against a "patchwork" of service across the U.S.

The District of Columbia’s 911 office would have to share data regularly and update the public under a transparency bill proposed last week by Judiciary and Public Safety Committee Chairperson Brooke Pinto (D). The bill aims to increase accountability by requiring the Office of Unified Communications to provide information on operations, efficacy and accuracy, Pinto’s office said Thursday. The bill would require the agency to post monthly data on the number of call-taker and dispatcher errors, shifts using minimum staffing levels, answer times and calls dropped and the number and type of 911 misuse calls. "OUC is a critical part of our public safety apparatus and it is crucial that the agency is functioning with accuracy, efficiency, and timeliness,“ said Pinto. "Patterns of errors at OUC are unacceptable especially with so much at stake in emergency situations.” The D.C. Council confirmed Heather McGaffin last month as OUC's new director (see 2305170017). In meetings on the confirmation, Pinto's committee sought improvements at the 911 center, where recent audits found problems with incorrect addresses, miscommunication and dispatching delays (see 2305090073).