A Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) will hold Broadband providers providers responsible for reporting outages of thirty minutes or longer that meet certain thresholds, so that the Commission can track and analyzes outages, to determine proper actions to correct the problem in a timely manner.
Older, legacy communications technologies are quickly being replaced by broadband. Today, almost 30 percent of the 89 million residential telephone subscribers are using VoIP. Broadband is responsible for a great volume of 9-1-1 calls already, and with the recent push toward Broadband technology, this trend will only continue in future years.
Many regions have experienced safety risks due to broadband outages. A broadband outage was responsible for more than 40,000 customers losing phone service for 12 hours. This lack of ability to reach 9-1-1 causes great risk to subscribers without service. The FCC recently initiated an investigation into 10,000 dropped calls during an emergency from Verizon customers in Maryland during an ice storm. The FCC seems to be taking a divide and conquer approach to improving 9-1-1 capability. By gathering information on outages, this assemble up the first piece of the puzzle.
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