WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission in May likely will complete rules to address wireless 911 calls in areas where only one cellular carrier provides service coverage-an issue that has pitted the cellular industry against two consumer groups.
The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association and the consumer groups have different proposals before the FCC to address how carriers should handle wireless calls in dead zones. These are areas where only one cellular carrier offers service. A person trying to make a wireless call may find that his cellular carrier does not offer service there. However, a competing carrier may have service in that area, and technology is available that would enable the wireless call to default to the other carrier’s network.
The dead-zone problem becomes particularly acute if the call being placed is to 911. There have been at least two examples where people could have been saved if their phones had defaulted to the network with the strongest signal, according to consumer advocates. In another case, Marcia Spielholz was critically injured in Los Angeles when her persistent calls to 911 could not be placed because she was in a dead zone.
The Ad Hoc Alliance for Access to 911 petitioned the FCC to order carriers to deploy technology so calls would default to the other cellular carrier if an adequate signal cannot be achieved on the preferred carrier’s network.
CTIA would rather the FCC adopt A over B roaming. Under this proposal, the phone first would search the preferred side-the subscriber’s carrier’s side-and only place the call on the non-preferred side if no signal could be found.
There are also instances where neither carrier offers service in some remote areas. Neither proposal addresses that issue. In addition, the issue only affects phones that can default to analog technology.
A new group, the Wireless Consumers Alliance, has been formed to lobby with the Ad Hoc Alliance at the FCC and in the judicial system. WCA works hand-in-hand with the Ad Hoc Alliance, said WCA’s Carl Hilliard.
CTIA’s proposal would allow 65 seconds to elapse before the call would be dropped unless the customer cut off first. CTIA also would delay implementation until Nov. 15, 2000, or 18 months after release of the rule.
“It usually takes a while to do the beta testing,” explained Brian Fontes, CTIA senior vice president for policy and administration. “Had the FCC made a decision months ago, we would be further down the road” to solving the dead-zone problem, Fontes added.
WCA’s proposal would require manufacturers and carriers to explain to consumers how to change the threshold signal level in terms easily understood by the user. This explanation would be in the form of a sticker affixed inside the battery case of each handset, WCA added in its proposal.
CTIA has said its proposal would allow the marketplace to decide which technology is best to solve the dead-zone problem. Consumers, not carriers, should decide how to solve the issue, Hilliard said. “For [CTIA] to say that the carrier will make the [marketplace] decision based on what the consumer desires is just pure fantasy,” he said.
The FCC had been expected to rule on the dead-zone problem at last month’s meeting, but the FCC is “still wrestling these issues to the ground,” said Thomas Sugrue, chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.
Still, the FCC is eager to write rules addressing dead-zone calls so it can go forward in other areas, Sugrue said. “One reason that we need to bring it to closure is we need to move to digital issues but there will still be an embedded base of analog [users].”
Those issues include whether the FCC should lift the spectrum cap in place today. CTIA, which mostly represents cellular incumbents, has asked the FCC to lift the cap, which restricts wireless carriers from owning more than 45 megahertz of spectrum in a given market. The Personal Communications Industry Association, which represents new personal communications services carriers, has said lifting the cap too soon would impede competition.
Under procedures established in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the FCC must rule on CTIA’s Sept. 30 request by the end of the year.
