Federal Communications Commission	"FCC  XX-XXX"


STATEMENT OF
CHAIRMAN BRENDAN CARR

Re: 	Facilitating Implementation of Next Generation 911 Services (NG911); Improving 911 Reliability, Report & Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, PS Docket Nos. 21-479, 13-75 (June 25, 2026).

Calls to 911 should always go through.  During times of crisis, Americans do not think about the complex web of networks and providers that make the call for help possible.  They just expect that when they dial 911, someone will answer.  That’s why resilient, redundant, and interoperable communications networks are critically important.  However, recent service disruptions have served as a reminder that network reliability cannot be taken for granted.  Even a brief outage can delay emergency response and undermine public confidence in the communications networks Americans rely on.

As the nation has embarked on the transition to NG911 over the last decade, the FCC has seen an uptick in major outages that have occurred in parts of transitional NG911 systems outside the scope of the FCC’s existing 911 reliability framework.  Today’s item will modernize the FCC’s reliability rules for an all-IP environment to reduce the risk of future outages and ensure that entities whose operations are essential to 911 call delivery have the necessary reliability and redundancy measures in place.

We do this through thoughtful and appropriately tailored measures that will help inform the FCC’s efforts to improve network reliability while minimizing burdens to the diverse providers playing a role in 911 calls across the communications ecosystem.  For example, while we have expanded the scope of covered 911 service providers subject to our rules, we have at the same time eased our certification requirements to minimize unnecessary filing burdens on providers.  And I thank Commissioner Trusty for her thoughtful edits to make sure we are striking a workable balance for providers when it comes to the material changes that would trigger updated certification filings.  We also explore additional interoperability requirements for NG911 in the further notice, as well as ways we can facilitate greater use of video technologies for 911 to improve accessibility for public safety.

Thank you to Zenji Nakazawa, David Furth, John Evanoff, Rachel Waxman, Chris Fedeli, Dan Spurlock, Roberto Mussenden, Rasoul Safavian, Suzy Rosen Singleton, and Bill Wallace for their great work on this item.  It has my support.

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