FCC pushes back E-911 benchmark deadline to March 2009

The Federal Communications Commission put the brakes on the September 2008 deadline for mobile-phone carriers to comply with new enhanced 911 location accuracy guidelines, but the action is unlikely to make court challenges go away.
Last September, the FCC clarified that cellular carriers must meet E-911 location accuracy requirements at the public-safety answering point service-area level as requested by public-safety groups and opposed by wireless service providers. The latter prefer state-wide averaging as a basis for determining adherence to E-911 location-accuracy standards.
The FCC ordered mobile-phone operators to meet interim and annual benchmarks over the next five years to ensure full compliance by Sept. 11, 2011. The first deadline was to have been Sept. 11, 2008. Wireless carriers – national and rural alike – protested the FCC ruling, and filed challenges in federal appeals court. The FCC has now agreed to extend next year’s benchmark date to March 11, 2009.
But the agency’s move appears to be too little, too late.
The Rural Cellular Association said it “views the FCC’s limited stay as a step in the right direction but it appears that the rationale for the [Public Safety and Homeland Security] Bureau’s last-minute action relates only to the commission’s delay in sending a summary of the revised location accuracy rules for Federal Register publication, rather than a recognition of the serious flaws in the rulemaking process. From RCA’s perspective, the appeal process must go forward.”