The Federal Communications Commission has adopted rules to ensure Americans’ phone calls to 9-1-1 are delivered during disasters. The rules require 9-1-1 service providers, generally, the wireline phone companies that route both wireline and wireless calls to 9-1-1 call centres, to take reasonable measures to provide reliable and resilient 9-1-1 service, as evidenced by an annual certification. The FCC also strengthened its rules to ensure 9-1-1 service providers give 9-1-1 call centres timely and useful notification of 9-1-1 network outages.

The FCC’s Policy Safety and Homeland Security Bureau conducted an inquiry into 9-1-1 outages, finding that many could have been avoided if 9-1-1 service providers had fully implemented well-established network reliability best practices, which were developed with and backed by industry, and other sound engineering principles. The FCC said that a purely voluntary approach to 9-1-1 reliability has not been sufficient.

The new rules are designed to maximise flexibility for 9-1-1 service providers and account for differences in network architecture without sacrificing reliability. Accordingly, the rules require service providers to certify annually that they have either implemented industry-backed best practices or acceptable alternative measures that are reasonably sufficient in light of their particular circumstances, as long as they briefly explain those measures. The best practices cover three core areas: auditing 9-1-1 circuits for physical diversity, maintaining central office backup power and maintaining reliable and resilient network monitoring systems. If needed, the Bureau may follow up with service providers to address deficiencies revealed by the certification process. The FCC will review these rules in five years to determine whether they are still technologically appropriate, adequate and necessary. In addition, the FCC amended its rules to now give 9-1-1 service providers deadlines and other more specific requirements for notifying 9-1-1 call centres of outages.

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