Using TTY Terminals as a Text-to-911 Solution

June 2013 — The Emergency Access Advisory Committee (EAAC) of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a report entitled Proposed Procedures for the TTY as a text terminal in legacy 9-1-1 PSAPs without IP Connection, which outlines the use of TTY terminals as a text-to-911 interim solution for Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) without IP connectivity.  The report highlights that TTY may lack some capabilities often used in SMS text messages.  For example, TTY messages have a limited set of characters available for use, are unable to use both upper and lowercase letters in the same message, and only one message can be transmitted at a time, otherwise “character loss or garbling occurs.”  However, despite the limitations, for those PSAPs without IP connection, the EAAC notes that the use of an application for message-to-TTY conversion can allow interim solutions for those PSAPs to receive and respond to text-to-911 messages.  According to the EAAC, the roll-out of text-to-911 will be intermittent, which may cause confusion for consumers who may be able to send an SMS message in one county but not the next.  The EAAC therefore notes the importance of trying to make text-to-911 interoperable with legacy technology.