Federal Communications Commission	"FCC  XX-XXX"


STATEMENT OF
CHAIRWOMAN JESSICA ROSENWORCEL
Re: 	Improving 911 Reliability, PS Docket No. 13-75; Amendments to Part 4 of the Commission’s Rules Concerning Disruptions to Communications, PS Docket No. 15-80; New Part 4 of the Commission’s Rules Concerning Disruptions to Communications, ET Docket No. 04-35, Second Report and Order (November 17, 2022).
In the Summer of 2020, there was a 911 outage across the country.  It lasted more than twelve hours.  During this outage, more than 23,000 calls to emergency call centers failed to connect.  That’s 23,000 people calling because they witnessed an accident, a life was in danger, or the straight-up unthinkable had occurred and they had nowhere else to turn.  Now according to a report from the Federal Communications Commission, this outage was the result of “an equipment failure” that was “exacerbated by a network routing misconfiguration” and also “magnified by a software flaw.”  In other words, this was what we call a sunny day outage.  Those are the outages that we don’t see coming.  They occur when the public least expects them.  It is so important for carriers to work to prevent these outages and if they do occur it is absolutely vital that our 911 call centers get accurate information about just what is happening in a timely way.  
That is why today we are adopting rules to harmonize reporting requirements involving 911 call centers.  We are standardizing the information that providers need to share with public safety answering points so that our 911 facilities are in the know when service outages occur.  The steps we take here are important because when it comes to 911, acting quickly matters and being accurate matters.  This is true in all circumstances, but especially valuable with sunny day outages.  Our actions will help get more information out more rapidly and more consistently.  It will speed service restoration and save lives.   
There’s more work ahead, but a big thank you to the staff responsible for this effort, including Brenda Boykin, Justin Cain, Scott Cinnamon, John Evanoff, David Furth, Lauren Kravetz, Nicole McGinnis, Saswat Misra, Erika Olsen, Austin Randazzo, and James Wiley of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau; Andrea Kearney, Doug Klein, Joel Rabinowitz, and Bill Richardson of the Office of General Counsel; Eric Ehrenreich, Matthew Gibson, Jason Koslofsky, Jeremy Marcus, Elizabeth Mumaw, Raphael Sznajder, and Ashley Tyson of the Enforcement Bureau; Mark Mantano, Emily Talaga, and Aleks Yankelevich from the Office of Economics and Analytics; Heather Hendrickson, Ethan Jeans, Charles Matthias, and Heyley Steffen from the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau; Elizabeth Drogula and Zachary Ross from the Wireline Competition Bureau; and Maura McGowan, Joy Ragsdale, and Chana Wilkerson for the Office of Communications Business Opportunities.   

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