Carriers and public safety groups disagreed on next steps for assuring the vertical accuracy (z-axis) of wireless calls to 911. CTIA said more time and testing is needed, but public safety groups urged the FCC to get tough. In September, the Public Safety Bureau sought comment on a z-axis test bed report submitted by CTIA on behalf of the nationwide carriers. Replies were due Thursday. The FCC approved an order 5-0 in January 2015 requiring carriers to improve their performance in identifying the location of wireless calls to 911 (see 1501290066). Then-Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said at the time the FCC wasn't being tough enough.

Florida counties are working together to ensure 911 calls are answered from places hit hard by Hurricane Michael, county emergency management officials told us Friday. The hurricane left some Virginia 911 call centers running on generators, state officials there said. The FCC Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS) communications status report Friday included nine Georgia counties added Thursday at the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s request, bringing the total number of counties covered to 110.

Congress should provide one-time funding to "forklift all 911 centers across the country at least to the level of technology that we've got now and that can match what FirstNet has,” APCO Chief Counsel Jeff Cohen said in an interview for C-SPAN's The Communicators, to be televised Saturday and likely put online Friday. Getting to next-generation 911 will take at least $10 billion, Cohen said. Congress is mulling NG-911 legislation (see 1809260062). The bill should be bipartisan, say that 911 must be IP-based, uniform and interoperable across country, and require states receiving grants to show they have a funding mechanism to sustain the network, Cohen said. APCO is concerned that early NG-911 deployments won't be interoperable: "If one state or one region deploys a connecting network, it will allow all the 911 centers connected to it to work together and share data [but] that's not necessarily the case if a 911 center needs to share data with another agency." State 911 fee diversion is a “terrible practice," he said. Congress can try to stop it by conditioning 911 grant programs, but the size of grants a state could lose must be significant compared with the amount a state is diverting, he said. "You need pain," which could be provided by a $10 billion NG-911 grant program, he said. Commissioner Mike O’Rielly and the FCC are doing well to “name and shame” diverters, but while the number may be shrinking somewhat, the practice stubbornly continues, he said.

A blue wave election could carry down ballot to state utility commission elections, while expected Democratic gains in gubernatorial elections affect other states that appoint commissioners, election analysts said. A Democratic surge might be tempered by commission elections happening mostly in strongly red states with many incumbents running, said David Beaudoin, Ballotpedia project lead-marquee team. Government transparency is an election issue in nearly half of the 10 states electing utility commissioners in November, and Democratic candidates in three states' races supported net neutrality, found our survey of commissioners’ campaign websites.

Chairman Ajit Pai gave predecessor Tom Wheeler credit for bringing direct 911 dialing to the FCC's phone system, as Pai and Hank Hunt discussed the story behind Kari's Law in a podcast. Hunt's daughter, Kari Dunn, was murdered by her estranged husband in a hotel bathroom in 2013 as her 9-year-old tried to call 911 unsuccessfully, because the phone system required extra-digit dialing. "In many cases, the fix is pretty easy," Pai said, citing the FCC's 2015 change (see 1505040060). "It essentially just was a case of my predecessor, the former chairman [Tom Wheeler], saying we want to change this and there it was. It was done. And so I think that's part of what struck members of Congress too, saying this is a common-sense fix." The FCC on Sept. 26 adopted an NPRM proposing to implement Kari's Law mandating direct 911 dialing (see 1809260047). Hunt, who played a key advocacy role, wanted to ensure changes didn't "break" business owners: "I don't want someone in a mom-and-pop hotel that's got a 40-room hotel having to spend $10,000 to upgrade." He said whenever he is in a hotel room, he checks to see if the phone system has direct 911 dialing, and talks to the manager if it doesn't: "It's an awareness problem at this point."

Michigan's Public Service Commission unanimously adopted reimbursement cost categories for deploying IP-based 911 services, the PSC said Friday. An order in docket U-20146 approved 12 cost categories and directed providers to submit categorized costs and to indicate if they're recurring. Cable companies disagreed with Frontier Communications seeking reimbursement for the 911 call conversion costs of service providers that aren't a county's 911 service provider (see 1806190065). The agency said the state 911 statute “specifically limits reimbursement to IP-based 9-1-1 service providers after review by the Commission.” In two other unanimous votes Friday, commissioners approved sending (1) unbundled network element and local interconnection services rules in docket U-20160 and (2) basic local exchange service customer migration rules in docket U-20161 to the Legislative Service Bureau and the Office of Regulatory Reinvention for formal approvals.

Nationwide next-generation 911 deployment will cost $9.5 billion-$12.7 billion, the 911 Implementation Coordination Office reported Friday. The joint NTIA-National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-administered office estimated implementation will take 10 years “assuming no scheduling delays, no funding delays, and no deviations from the recommended implementation path,” NHTSA Deputy Administrator Heidi King and NTIA Administrator David Redl said. “Multistate implementation,” in which multiple states and territories within each of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's 10 regions coordinate on buying, implementing and operating shared core services centers, would cost the least. “State implementation,” in which independent states and territories would buy and operate their own core services, would cost $10.5 billion. A “service solution” option, in which states and territories buy all core services and public safety answering point system maintenance for an NG-911 provider, would cost $12.7 billion. The document “provides policymakers at all levels of government and public-safety stakeholders with the detailed finical information needed to achieve a coordinated, nationwide deployment of NG911,” said National Emergency Number Association President Jamison Peevyhouse.

The FCC released an NPRM seeking to improve 911 calling and location accuracy, which was adopted 4-0 at commissioners' meeting Wednesday to begin implementing Kari's Law and Ray Baum's Act requirements (see 1809260047). The notice proposes to ensure 911 direct dialing from multiline telephone systems in larger buildings and complexes, and to ensure "dispatchable location" information is conveyed with calls to emergency responders. Comments will be due 45 days and replies 75 days after Federal Register publication, said the text in Thursday's Daily Digest.

Several more Colorado communities plan ballot questions in November on broadband projects. Many counties and municipalities cleared such ballot votes in recent elections to opt out of a 2005 state restriction on municipal broadband known as Senate Bill 152. Reversing that law may no longer be necessary given success of opt-out votes, and such votes combined with new state funding for broadband could lead to public-private partnerships in the state, local officials said in interviews. CenturyLink said citizens should support partnerships.

The 911 Fee Integrity Act (HR-6424) and two other public safety telecom-related bills drew bipartisan backing during a Wednesday House Communications Subcommittee hearing, though some Democrats insisted more federal funding will be needed for the legislation to be effective. House Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and others invoked the Next Generation 9-1-1 Act (HR-4672/S-2061). The subcommittee also examined the National Non-Emergency Mobile Number Act (HR-5700) and Anti-Swatting Act (HR-6003).