Text-to-911

March 2014 — The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FNPRM) in the Matter of Facilitating the Development of Text-to-911 and Other Next Generation 911 Applications and Framework for Next Generation 911 Deployment [PS Docket No. 10-255 and PS Docket No. 11-153] regarding the implementation of text-to-911.

January 2014 — The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) held an open meeting regarding the considerations for a Report and Order and Notices of Proposed Rulemaking to address both technology transition experiments and policy goals regarding widespread implementation of public safety measures.  Following the meeting the FCC announced the launch of voluntary experiments regarding the technology transitions in communications networks.

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.

June 2013 — Wireless RERC principal investigator, Dr. Helena Mitchell, presented 9-1-1 & Alert Trends for People with Disabilities at the National Emergency Number Associations’ (NENA) annual conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. NENA’s educational tracks, among other things, addressed NG911, accessibility, text-to-911, public outreach, and Geographical Information Systems (GIS).

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 let