FCC Plans NPRM to Improve Reliability of 911 Service

The FCC determined that the 911 service outages that affected millions of people last June after the derecho windstorms were "avoidable."  A recent report found that the outages occured because wireline service providers had not followed best practices meant to ensure reliability.

As many as 3.6 million citizens were impacted by the service outages according to the report, which was based on an inquiry conucted by the Public Safety Homeland Security Bureau.  Some level of service was lost by 77 PSAPS, 17 of which experienced systematic failures causing complete outages for varying time frames.  As a result, the FCC will launch a rulemaking proceeding to improve reliability of existing 911 service and accelerate the initiative for NG-911.

The report recommended FCC comissioners consider specific requirements for communications providers, including maintaining central office backup power, reliable network monitoring systems, periodic audits of 911 circuits, and notifying call centers of problems as they arise.

Findings on Superstorm Sandy will be addressed in upcoming field hearings.

Read more at Urgent Communications.