FCC Chmn. Powell declared Wed. that the Commission wasn’t backing away from the Nov. 24 deadline for wireless local number portability (LNP) in the top 100 markets, holding up enforcement efforts involving Enhanced 911 as an example of what carriers that didn’t comply would face. “I think the carriers ought to quit complaining about it and get ready to comply with it,” Powell said at a news conference on a broad range of upcoming FCC initiatives.

The FCC asked the Mktg. Assn. (DMA) Wed. for a copy of the national do-not-call (DNC) list and a list of all members who had downloaded it. The goal is to use the information to enforce compliance with the registry, FCC Chmn. Powell said in an earlier news conference that covered other issues as well (see other stories this issue). Powell told reporters the agency planned to be “extremely aggressive” in enforcing the DNC list and hoped to get from the DMA “the grist of what we need for effective enforcement.”

The House Commerce Committee passed the Enhanced 911 (E911) Implementation Act (HR-2898) Wed., but not before some concerns from the Administration surfaced. The bill passed with no objection after House Commerce Committee Chmn. Tauzin (R-La.) introduced an amendment that would strengthen the grant program so no state -- or entity within a state, including Public Service Answering Points (PSAPs) -- that diverted E911 funds could get federal funding.

Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) provider Vonage asked the FCC to preempt a recent ruling by the Minn. PUC that Vonage’s VoIP offering was a telephone service subject to state regulatory requirements. The company had asked the FCC to preempt the PUC on the ground that Vonage was providing an information service that was not in the PUC’s jurisdiction. The PUC said Vonage must obtain a state local exchange certificate and comply with state 911 rules and other regulatory requirements imposed on local exchange providers. Vonage told the FCC that its VoIP service was an Internet information application just like e-mail, and never was designed to comply with common carrier regulation. It said compliance with some state rules, such as those governing 911 service, would be impossible for technical reasons. Vonage also said the nature of its technology made it impossible to separate intrastate and interstate traffic since there was no way of knowing the exact location of an Internet user.

Consumers Union (CU) began a public campaign Tues. -- www.EscapeCellHell.com -- to encourage cellphone users to tell federal lawmakers they want wireless local number portability. The Web site connects consumers to their members of Congress to lobby them to retain a Nov. 24 wireless local number portability (LNP) deadline. “What’s outrageous is that at the same time cellphone companies are trying to stop consumers from taking their phone numbers with them when they switch carriers, most are collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in number portability fees on cellphone bills, which means consumers are paying for a service they are not getting,” said Janee Briesemeister, dir. of the effort. CU said the campaign would focus next on improving Enhanced 911 service for cellphone usage and on securing passage of a Cal. “consumer bill of rights.”

Telecom-related bills were signed in N.Y. and Cal. N.Y. Gov. George Pataki (R) signed a 911 bill (SB-5289) that allows private nonprofit companies to contract with counties of more than 1 million population to run the public safety answering points of 911 systems. The new law requires that private nonprofit 911 operators be reimbursed by the locality and state in the same way as public-sector operators. In Cal., Gov. Gray Davis (D) signed 2 bills addressing financial responsibility of telecom carriers and other utilities. The first (SB-523) requires companies to notify shareholders and govt. officials when they learn that materially false or misleading financial statements have been made by corporate officers. The 2nd (AB-1031) makes state securities laws consistent with federal law by increasing the criminal penalties for securities fraud and for interfering with a securities fraud investigation.

The full FCC will rule soon on wireless local number portability (LNP) implementation issues, including Wireless Bureau guidance on which 5 carriers have sought Commission review, Wireless Bureau Chief John Muleta told reporters Tues. He stressed that the FCC was holding to a Nov. 24 LNP deadline, noting that Verizon and Verizon Wireless reached an LNP pact this week. “If there’s a will, there’s a way,” he said. “So that’s going to be the motto for LNP because carriers that are interested in doing it find ways of being able to do it.”

T-Mobile USA told the FCC this week it supported a suggestion by Sprint that the Dept. of Justice provide an opinion on the scope of a wireless carrier’s legal obligation to protect the privacy of customers in emergency situations. T-Mobile filed reply comments on a petition by public safety groups, including the Assn. of Public Safety Communications Officials, that argued for broader disclosure of customer situation in emergency situations. T-Mobile said it sympathized with the frustration public safety operators have in this area, but agreed with CTIA the FCC lacks authority to change such disclosure requirements because they're based on statutory mandates. These concerns “are better directed to Congress,” T-Mobile said. But T-Mobile said it backed DoJ providing an opinion on the legal obligations of carriers. T-Mobile said it also would support the FCC hosting a “legal summit” or information exchange to clarify the scope of the law and a carrier’s obligation to protect customer privacy. T-Mobile outlined its written emergency disclosure procedures. Its policy is to “positively identify” an emergency caller and obtain a written demand for disclosure on “official letterhead” prior to release of customer information. “When T-Mobile has a reasonable belief that an emergency exists where there’s immediate danger of death or serious physical injury to any person, whether that person is a T-Mobile subscriber, T-Mobile may disclose any subscriber information in its possession to emergency personnel, including the location of a particular phone or past billing records,” it said. While public safety petitioners had raised the question of whether property loss constitutes such an emergency, T-Mobile said it doesn’t place property loss in a category requiring the disclosure of certain customer information and will only release a customer’s name, address and phone number in response to a burglary or building fire report. The law doesn’t consider property loss to be an emergency requiring the release of more information, T-Mobile said. Public safety petitioners had also asked the FCC to rule that carriers must release caller location information to emergency dispatchers even if the customer proprietary network information requested was associated with a customer who was not the caller to 911. AT&T Wireless also cited concerns over the limited statutory scope for such disclosures. “Given that there is little ambiguity in either the statutory language or the congressional intent evidenced in the legislative history, it would not be appropriate for the Commission to grant petitioners’ request to expand the scope of the statutes,” AT&T Wireless said. Verizon Wireless said it backed DoJ providing guidance because the public safety petition seeks interpretation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which is a federal criminal statute. A DoJ pronouncement could take into account homeland security legislative changes that have altered the ECPA, Verizon Wireless said. “Unless and until the DoJ passes on these important legal questions, the FCC has no support for the position supported by public safety and should deny the petition,” Verizon Wireless said.

The Public Safety Foundation of America announced $2 million in grants to 42 agencies for wireless Enhanced 911 services. The Assn. of Public-Safety Communications Officials created the foundation last year to provide funding and technical support for E911. The grant funding comes from a nonprofit organization created by Nextel for rolling out wireless E911 and from other sources. This is the 2nd round of grants awarded and 2 more rounds will be made in 2003, the foundation said. The latest grant awards include $349,700 to the Ky. State Police and $95,770 to the Mahoning County, O., E911 program.

OnStar, in a filing at the FCC last week, cited the relatively low rate of daily 911 calls placed directly by its subscribers as among the reasons the agency should not treat its service the same as a conventional wireless handset in terms of 911 mandates. Late last year, OnStar asked the Commission for a declaratory ruling on the extent to which telematics units embedded in vehicles were covered under Enhanced 911 rules. OnStar and similar systems use privately run call centers to forward automatic location information and other data to emergency responders. The company sought clarification that such embedded devices weren’t handsets as defined under FCC E911 orders and that those units weren’t included in calculating wireless carrier’s Phase 2 handset compliance requirements. OnStar told the FCC it now used analog technology because it allowed voice and data to be transmitted on the same call. “This capability is required in offering automatic airbag deployment notification, emergency and other location-based services,” OnStar said. “The challenge in transitioning to digital is developing a robust data transport.” It said fewer than 13 calls per day were placed to 911 by subscribers using its optional wireless calling service, which essentially are not screened by OnStar. It uses a single transceiver-based service in which prepaid interconnected wireless calling is an option, but only if the driver first has subscribed to the basic safety and security suite of call center services, including location-based emergency and automatic crash notification services. OnStar has contended that its location-based emergency and automatic crash notification service capability differentiates it from the conventional handset scenarios for which wireless E911 requirements were designed. The company told the FCC it now forwarded more than 6,000 screened calls with location information each month to public safety entities.