Elkhart, Indiana, and the Dorchester County, Maryland, 911 Communications Division on Monday became the latest local government units objecting to the Public Safety Spectrum Alliance’s (PSSA) proposal to assign the 4.9 GHz band to FirstNet. The proposal has been highly divisive (see 2408050009). “Many local and regional authorities currently operate point-to-point communications on the 4.9 GHz band, during natural disasters, natural disaster recovery, and other life-threatening emergencies,” said Elkhart Mayor Rod Roberson (D). “The local nature of the 4.9 GHz band is crucial for future preparedness and providing network resiliency to first responders,” the Maryland county said.
Charter Communications "is glad to have resolved these issues" around its reporting of network outages, the company emailed us Monday evening. Charter agreed to a $15 million penalty related to outage reporting (see 2407290043). Its February 2023 outage was due to a denial-of-service attack, according to the consent decree. Charter said the FCC consent decree identified no flaws in Charter's cybersecurity practices. The company said it "agreed with the FCC that we should continue doing what we’re already doing.” In the consent decree, the FCC Enforcement Bureau said Charter "established and shall continue to maintain and evolve its overall cybersecurity risk management program" in accordance with the voluntary cybersecurity framework in the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cyber Security Framework as well as through other industry standards and best practices.
Charter Communications has agreed it will pay $15 million for failing to notify public safety answering points about a trio of network outages in early 2023 that affected 911 service, the FCC Enforcement Bureau said Monday. The bureau said Charter also acknowledged it didn't meet other network outage reporting system (NORS) deadlines tied to numerous planned maintenance outages. In addition, it said Charter didn't notify more than 1,000 PSAPs about a Feb. 19 outage and didn't meet NORS reporting deadlines tied to that outage and to March 31 and April 26 outages. Charter didn't comment.
The FCC Public Safety Bureau's report on the Feb. 22 nationwide outage of AT&T’s wireless network (see 2403040062) found procedural mistakes by the carrier. Released Monday, the report said the Enforcement Bureau could impose sanctions. Based on information from AT&T, the report said “all voice and 5G data services for all users of AT&T Mobility were unavailable as a result of the outage, affecting more than 125 million registered devices, blocking more than 92 million voice calls, and preventing more than 25,000 calls” to 911. The direct cause was “an error by an employee who misconfigured a single network element, ultimately causing the AT&T Mobility network to respond by entering Protection Mode and disconnecting all wireless devices,” the bureau said: “Adequate peer review should have prevented the network change from being approved, and, in turn, from being loaded onto the network. This peer review did not take place.” The report cited a lack of post-installation testing, inadequate lab testing and “insufficient safeguards and controls” on AT&T's part, as well as insufficient procedures for mitigating problems. It noted the company has “taken numerous steps to prevent a reoccurrence.” For instance, within two days of the outage, “AT&T implemented additional technical controls in its network,” the report found: “This included scanning the network for any network elements lacking the controls that would have prevented the outage, and promptly putting those controls in place. AT&T has engaged in ongoing forensic work and implemented additional enhancements to promote network robustness and resilience.” AT&T has "implemented changes to prevent what happened in February from occurring again," a spokesperson emailed: "We fell short of the standards that we hold ourselves to, and we regret that we failed to meet the expectations of our customers and the public safety community.”
The global outage of Microsoft systems caused by a software update from cybersecurity company Crowdstrike grounded airplanes globally and affected some broadcasters and 911 systems but spared others, reports from multiple companies and state agencies said.
The FCC Thursday unanimously approved, as expected (see 2407160048), an NPRM that proposes industry-wide handset unlocking rules, requiring all mobile wireless providers to unlock handsets 60 days after they’re activated, unless a carrier determines the handset “was purchased through fraud.” The only change of note was an edit on handset and fraud issues added at Commissioner Brendan Carr's request, an FCC official said.
Don't expect big changes in the next-generation 911 draft order that's set for a vote during the FCC commissioners' open meeting Thursday, a 10th-floor official tells us. While the order should help facilitate the NG911 transition, a quicker route would come if Congress found the roughly $15 billion that states and localities likely need for deployment, said Jonathan Gilad, National Emergency Number Association (NENA) government affairs director. Minus federal funding, "it will always be a haves and have-nots situation," with some localities and states more financially able than others to afford the transition, he said. The FCC said the order is aimed at accelerating the NG911 rollout (see 2406270068).
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- State utility commissioners at the NARUC conference grappled Tuesday with the U.S. Supreme Court reversal of the Chevron doctrine. Loper Bright, “though not framed as a federalist decision," has "modest pro-state implications,” Wilkinson Barker’s Daniel Kahn said during a panel of telecom law experts. Earlier, an NTCA official told the NARUC Telecom Committee that his association plans to seek reconsideration of an FCC order on next-generation 911 if commissioners approve it at their Thursday meeting.
The 12-month compliance timeline in the FCC's draft next-generation 911 order might be insufficient for smaller providers, according to the Competitive Carriers Association. The order is part of the FCC's July agenda (see 2406260058). In a docket 18-64 filing Monday recapping meetings with the offices of Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and Commissioner Brendan Carr, CCA said non-nationwide commercial mobile radio service providers should have at least 18 months for each phase of the NG911 transition following a request from a 911 authority, rather than 12 months. It urged the FCC to clarify that it will consider waiver requests from non-nationwide CMRS providers in completing connections. In addition, it asked the FCC to clarify that when a provider falls into two categories for the purposes of compliance time frames, the longer compliance time frame applies.
The House Education and Workforce Committee advanced an amended version of the Supporting Accurate Views of Emergency Services (911 Saves) Act (HR-6319), drawing criticism from the National Emergency Number Association and APCO. HR-6319 and the similar Enhancing First Response Act (S-3556) would reclassify public safety call takers and dispatchers as a protective service. A substitute amendment from Rep. Lori Chavez-Deremer, R-Ore., requires the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics “consider establishing a separate code for public safety telecommunicators as a subset of protective service occupations” instead of mandating the reclassification. House Education also approved by voice vote an amendment from ranking member David Scott, D-Va., to extend the timeline for BLS to report back on considering the reclassification from 30 days to 60. NENA and APCO are “disappointed that this version of [HR-6319] strays from the language of previous iterations” by not mandating the proposed reclassification, the groups said in a joint statement. They “commend the comments from [House Education] members expressing support for 9-1-1 professionals' service to our communities. We look forward to working with” lawmakers “to ensure that 9-1-1 professionals are recognized for the highly skilled, specialized, life-saving work they do every day.”