Mixed Progress Toward Text-to-911

July 2013 — Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile released reports outlining their progress to deployment of text-to-911.  These reports were issued following an agreement made between the wireless providers, the National Emergency Number Association (NENA), and APCO International to offer text-to-911 services to subscribers.  The reports note that while the four providers all deliver bounce-back messages to subscribers who attempt to send text messages to 911 in areas where the services is not yet provided, each provider is currently in a different state of text-to-911 deployment. Sprint recently completed a six-month trial of various vendors and will soon make a selection, while AT&T is set to begin a trial of text-to-911 later this year. T-Mobile has selected a vendor and is working to develop an “interim” text-to-911 solution.  Finally, Verizon is working with Telecommunication Systems Inc. (TCS) to deploy text-to-911.  Through Verizon, the service is currently available in eleven jurisdictions in North Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, Texas, New York, and Maryland, and is scheduled to deploy in additional locations later this year.