Federal Communications Commission	"FCC  XX-XXX"


STATEMENT OF
CHAIRWOMAN JESSICA ROSENWORCEL

Re:	Location-Based Routing for Wireless 911 Calls, PS Docket No. 18-64, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (December 21, 2022) 

When you call 911 you want to reach the right public safety officials who can send help to the right place at the right time.  

That sounds simple, but it doesn’t always work that way.  I know, because some years back when I visited the emergency call center in downtown Little Rock, the professional staff showed me how calling 911 in the center would not get answered in Little Rock.  Instead, it would be answered by a call center in North Little Rock—on the other side of the Arkansas River.  That’s because the call was routed based on the location of the closest cell tower—and not the actual location of the call.  

What I saw is not all that uncommon.  In fact, as many as 23 million wireless calls each year may be misrouted to the wrong public safety answering point using legacy 911 systems.  

We can fix this—and we should.  In 2018 we kicked off an inquiry to explore how location-based routing technology can help address this problem and speed up 911 responses.  Earlier this year, we refreshed the record in that proceeding.  Since that time, some of our largest carriers have started using this technology in their networks.  Today, we adopt a rulemaking that proposes conditions to require location-based routing nationwide.  

We do this because improving call routing will improve communications in crisis.  But there are other steps we need to take to update emergency calling to next-generation 911.  That’s because we need to make sure that the more than 6,000 public safety answering points across the country are not stuck with old systems designed for the era of analog calling.  We need every one of them to be able to take full advantage of the digital age, with emergency communications systems that support voice, text, data, and video as well as more redundancy to protect against outages.  These generational improvements in public safety are necessary—and support for them can come from the auction of our public airwaves.  That’s why I believe we need to work with Congress and first responders to use the billions of dollars that our spectrum auctions raise to assist with the transition to next-generation 911.  With our spectrum auction authority still the subject of legislative discussion, this opportunity is still out there.  I want us to seize it.  Because the steps we take today are only part of what needs to be a broader and bolder effort to improve 911—for everyone, everywhere.    

Thank you to the staff responsible for this rulemaking, including David Furth, John Evanoff, Brenda Boykin, Rasoul Safavian, Ashley Tellier, and Rachel Wehr from the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau; Elizabeth Mumaw, Jeremy Marcus, and Ashley Tyson from the Enforcement Bureau; Joy Ragsdale and Chana Wilkerson from the Office of Communications Business Opportunities; William Richardson, Douglas Klein, and Keith McCrickard from the Office of General Counsel; Emily Talaga, Kenneth Lynch, Eugene Kiselev, Aleks Yankelevich, Chuck Needy, Patrick Sun, Patrick Brogan, and Paulo Lopes from the Office of Economics and Analytics; Ethan Jeans from the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau; and Elizabeth Drogula and Heather Hendrickson from the Wireline Competition Bureau.
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