Federal Communications Commission	"FCC  XX-XXX"


STATEMENT OF
COMMISSIONER BRENDAN CARR

Re:	Wireless E911 Location Accuracy Requirements, PS Docket No. 07-114.

Nearly a quarter of a billion 9-1-1 calls are dialed each year.  If you assume an even distribution, that works out to the average American making an emergency call every 16 months.  And although we learned as kids when, and how, and for what purposes to dial 9-1-1, those calls never are easy.  A fire, a break-in, a sick family member—they can rattle even cool-headed people.  In those crisis moments, getting one’s bearings and telling the operator where help is needed can be difficult.

So I think I can speak for all of us—public safety advocates, the wireless industry, and each of my fellow commissioners—when I say we need tech’s help to improve 9-1-1 response.  Since at least 2015, the Commission has been tightening our mandate that wireless phones transmit to 9-1-1 operators certain location information that can be tied to an address or place on a map.  It has taken longer to arrive at a height information requirement, with our first deadline coming next April.  But we’re getting there with barometers and software that leverages device signals.  

This is not an achievement of government mandates but of technologists and entrepreneurs focused on solving the problem.  Already two companies have demonstrated how using air pressure can accurately project the height of a call’s origin.  Google is making progress with a different approach, and Apple will demonstrate its solution in the test bed this fall.  We are grateful for these companies’ efforts and confident that their solutions will save lives.

I thank the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau for its continued focus on this important issue.  The item has my support.   


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