Federal Communications Commission	"FCC  XX-XXX"


STATEMENT OF
CHAIRWOMAN JESSICA ROSENWORCEL

Re:	Location-Based Routing for Wireless 911 Calls, PS Docket No. 18-64, Report and Order (January 25, 2024) 

If you have ever dialed 911, you know seconds matter.  You want that call answered by someone who can send help fast and to the right place.  

As simple as that sounds, it doesn’t always work that way.  I know because I have seen this system fall short.  Years ago—and I have told this story before but I am going to tell it again because it crystalizes this problem like nothing else—I was in Little Rock.  I visited the 911 call center downtown.  While I was there the professional staff showed me how dialing 911 on a wireless phone while standing in the building 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 person dialing.  This slows emergency response because it requires transferring the call to get to the right public safety officials who can send the right response.

What I saw in Arkansas is not that uncommon.  In fact, based on the latest estimates as many as 23 million wireless calls each year may be misrouted to the wrong public safety answering point.  Every one of those calls results in delay.  It slows response to emergencies.  

We are changing that today.  We are adopting rules requiring all wireless carriers to implement location-based routing nationwide for calls and real-time texts to 911 call centers.  This means that when a call travels on IP-based networks, public safety officials will receive emergency calls based on the location of the person calling, not the closest cell tower.  It means that back in Arkansas, that call I made to 911 in Little Rock would get answered in Little Rock and not in the town across the river.  

Some of our largest carriers have already started using location-based routing technology in their networks.  So we know it works.  Now we look forward to having it work everywhere.

	Thank you to the staff who worked on this effort to improve 911 and emergency response, including Debra Jordan, David Furth, John Evanoff, Brenda Boykin, Jill Coogan, Zachary DiLeo, Thomas Eng, Jay English, Barbara Kunkel, Rasoul Safavian, and Rachel Wehr from the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau; Suzy Rosen Singleton and Bill Wallace from the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau; Jeremy Marcus, Shannon Lipp, Elizabeth Mumaw, and Matthew Gibson from the Enforcement Bureau; Joy Ragsdale and Chana Wilkerson from the Office of Communications Business Opportunities; Anjali Singh, Doug Klein, Keith McCrickard, and Elliot Tarloff from the Office of General Counsel; Behzad Ghaffari, Paulo Lopes, Ken Lynch, Patrick Sun, Craig Stroup, Emily Talaga, Stephen Tolbert, and Aleksandr Yankelevich from the Office of Economics and Analytics; Cameron Duncan from the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau; and Elizabeth Drogula, Christi Shewman, Jodie May, Callie Coker, Ty Covey, and Brian Cruikshank from the Wireline Competition Bureau.

2