The FCC will focus on making GPS and 911 calls more reliable at its March 27 open meeting, Chairman Brendan Carr announced Wednesday. The meeting will be the second with Carr at the helm. Draft meeting items are expected to be posted Thursday.

FailSafe offers technology that can help identify callers who try but fail to get through to 911, the company told the FCC Friday. The company said it provides “the Intelligent Signaling Network data that accompanies every wireless, landline and [IP] call into actionable 911 alerts.” Its “methodology takes the regulatory spotlight off recalcitrant carriers, which frankly, never wanted the 911 reporting job in the first place,” said a filing in docket 15-80. “Instead it focuses on people affected, rather than estimates based solely on carrier performance.”

Backers of federal funding for next-generation 911 tech upgrades told us they remain hopeful that lawmakers will reach an agreement on a spectrum title in a budget reconciliation measure that allocates some revenue from future FCC sales to those projects. GOP leaders have been pushing to reserve that money entirely as an offset for tax cuts initially enacted during the first Trump administration (see 2502190068). Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz of Texas and other Republicans are emphasizing auction proceeds as a reconciliation funding source after repeatedly opposing several spectrum packages during the last Congress that used the potential money to pay for a range of telecom projects (see 2308100058).

The Communications Workers of America and Bandwidth separately opposed AT&T’s moves to close additional parts of its legacy copper network (see 2501310046). AT&T CEO John Stankey said in January that the carrier plans to file applications at the FCC to stop selling legacy products in about 1,300 wire centers, which is roughly a quarter of the AT&T footprint (see 2501270047). AT&T started the push during the last administration and is taking a more aggressive approach at the current FCC.

The Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation filed a paper Wednesday at the FCC on positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) options other than NextNav’s proposal to use 900 MHz spectrum as an alternative to GPS (see 2404160043). The U.S. “must develop alternatives to GPS and strengthen its PNT capabilities,” the paper says. But “granting the NextNav petition is costly in terms of spectrum, not necessary to achieve this goal and likely would not even deliver a real-world improvement in the country’s PNT capabilities.” The paper, filed in docket 24-240, notes China and Russia have terrestrial PNT systems “that make them much more resilient to interference with their satellite navigation systems.” Other vendors and technologies -- including Locata, PhasorLab, the Broadcast Positioning System and enhanced long-range navigation (eLoran) -- also offer alternatives to GPS, the foundation said. “These companies have not asked the FCC for additional spectrum to implement their solutions.”

The Nevada Division of Emergency Management backed NextNav's proposal to reconfigure the 902-928 MHz band, enabling what NextNav called a “high-quality, terrestrial complement” to GPS for positioning, navigation and timing services (see 2404160043). The emergency agency said public safety answering points and first responders rely on accurate location information to do their jobs. “Despite advancements, GPS alone often fails to provide reliable location data indoors or in dense urban environments,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 24-240. “This limitation has real-world consequences, as delays in locating 911 callers can result in lost lives and property.”

House Commerce Committee leaders drew battle lines during and after a Thursday Communications Subcommittee hearing over GOP proposals to move spectrum legislation as part of an upcoming budget reconciliation package (see 2501070069). House Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone of New Jersey and other Democrats strongly objected to using reconciliation as a spectrum vehicle because it would allocate future license sales revenue to fund tax cuts instead of telecom priorities. Lawmakers from both parties again cited long-standing DOD objections to repurposing the 3.1-3.45 GHz band and other military-controlled frequencies as a continued flashpoint in spectrum legislative talks in this Congress (see 2501070069).

The FCC's proposed requirement that covered text providers support the georouting of text messages made to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline to the appropriate local crisis center is receiving opposition. In docket 18-336 replies posted Friday, some communications industry interests and allies challenged the FCC's proposed implementation time frame and urged the agency to hold off for now on georouting requirements. Mental health interests didn't file reply comments but have urged the agency to act (see 2408080061). The 988 call georouting order approved unanimously at the FCC's October meeting included an NPRM about text georouting (see 2410170026).

A trio of public safety groups urged the FCC to require telecom providers to “implement, host, maintain, and operate” a secure, two-way outage dashboard providing updated information on 911 outages. The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials, the National Association of State 911 Administrators and the National Emergency Number Association said the existing system isn’t working. “Unfortunately, the Commission’s current outage reporting rules combined with the practices of the service providers often result” in emergency communications centers (ECCs) “not being notified of outages or receiving notifications that are either irrelevant to the ECCs’ jurisdiction, provide limited information, are not updated in a timely manner, or are formatted in a way that it is difficult and time-consuming for the ECCs to parse through during an outage situation,” said a filing this week in docket 15-80. ECCs “should be notified of outages and disruptions that could impact communications … even if the outage does not meet the high thresholds that trigger a notification requirement in the existing rules,” they added.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau on Wednesday released rules for new multilingual templates for wireless emergency alerts. It sought comment in a public notice last year (see 2405130047). The order adopts templates for the 18 “most commonly issued and most time-sensitive types of alerts, which will be available in English and the next 13 most commonly spoken languages” in the U.S. “We promote the flexibility and effectiveness of these templates by requiring Participating … Providers to support the ability for alert originators to customize the alerts using event-specific information,” the order said. The order also adopts non-fillable American Sign Language (ASL) templates -- video files of the alert messages in ASL that don’t include the same elements required in other templates. “Together, these steps further the Commission’s goal of ensuring that WEA remains an essential and effective public safety tool that allows alert originators to warn their communities of danger and advise them to take protective action,” the bureau said. The alerts cover tornado emergency, tornado warning, flash flood emergency, flash flood warning, severe thunderstorm, snow squall, dust storm, hurricane, storm surge, extreme wind, test alert, fire, tsunami, earthquake, boil water, avalanche, hazardous materials and 911 outage. “We decline to adopt evacuation and shelter-in-place templates and defer consideration of other templates at this time,” the order said. The issue of whether participating providers “should be required to support additional templates, including an ‘all-clear’ template and other templates suggested by commenters in the record, is still under consideration by the Bureau at this time,” the order said in a footnote. The bureau addressed concerns CTIA and others raised about problems with preinstalled alerts (see 2406140051). “We agree that there are certain key technical issues to work through during the standards development process, but disagree insofar as commenters suggest these are barriers to adopting fillable templates that cannot be overcome,” the order said. The bureau agreed with CTIA that “dynamically translating the fillable fields would be technically infeasible at this time.” The order imposes a deadline of compliance within 30 months following publication in the Federal Register. CTIA and ATIS had questioned whether that timeline was workable. The bureau agreed with CTIA “that requiring the English message to appear alongside the multilingual template serves as an important public safety redundancy.” It agreed with ATIS “that displaying the English and multilingual versions together” is “technically feasible.” The bureau also agreed with CTIA that “fillable ASL templates are not technically feasible at this time.”