WASHINGTON-The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation is slated to hold a hearing this week in the class-action lawsuits against the mobile-phone industry regarding whether phones comply with the 911 strongest-signal rules.
The hearing is set to occur in Charleston, S.C.
The Wireless Consumers Alliance filed several lawsuits late last year claiming that none of the 33 phones it tested met the Federal Communications Commission’s 911 strongest-signal rules adopted in 1999.
WCA filed lawsuits against Sprint Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. in the U.S. Court for the Southern District of New York, in federal court in Washington state against AT&T Wireless Services Inc. and Nokia Corp., and in the U.S. Court for the Central District of California against Cingular Wireless L.L.C. and L.M. Ericsson. Verizon Wireless and Nextel Communications Inc. were not named in any of the lawsuits.
The FCC gave the carriers and their manufacturer partners several options on how to implement the rules. Under one option, the phone must inform the caller that a 911 call has been placed by both an audible message and a message on the phone screen and the phone must connect to the preferred carrier within 17 seconds or switch to the non-preferred carrier. All phones with an analog mode were required to comply with this rule as of Feb. 13, 2000.
