WASHINGTON-The Rural Telecommunications Group is urging the Federal Communications Commission to give rural wireless carriers more time to comply with wireless enhanced 911 rules and to create a fourth class-Tier IV with less than 100,000 subscribers-to acknowledge the difficulties these carriers have in complying with the E911 rules.
Rural carriers were supposed to comply with the rules beginning Sept. 1.
RTG is urging the FCC to give Tier IV carriers choosing network-based solutions more time to meet the rules and additional relief for carriers with less than three cell sites.
“We have members in Alaska and Texas that operate very small systems that only have one or two cell sites,” said Carressa Bennet, RTG general counsel. “Triangulation with standard cellular antenna configurations requires a minimum of three locations and cannot occur from two cell sites.”
Tier IV carriers that choose handset-based solutions should not be required to start selling the handsets until they receive a request from a public-safety answering point, suggests RTG.
“A Tier IV carrier who has not received a PSAP request may have been predisposed to a handset-based solution, but then was forced to choose a network-based solution simply because handsets were not readily available,” said Michael Bennet, a principle with the law firm of Bennet & Bennet.
