Wireless E911 Location Accuracy Requirements

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <CFR>47 CFR Part 9</CFR> <DEPDOC>[PS Docket No. 07-114; FR ID 290080]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Wireless E911 Location Accuracy Requirements</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Communications Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (the FCC or Commission) proposes rules to strengthen wireless 911 location accuracy rules and to put more actionable location information in the hands of Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) and first responders. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments are due on or before June 6, 2025, and reply comments are due on or before July 7, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments, identified by PS Docket No. 07-114, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Electronic Filers:</E> Comments may be filed electronically using the internet by accessing the ECFS: <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs.</E> • <E T="03">Paper Filers:</E> Parties who choose to file by paper must file an original and one copy of each filing. Filings can be sent by hand or messenger delivery, by commercial courier, or by the U.S. Postal Service. All filings must be addressed to the Secretary, Federal Communications Commission. Hand-delivered or messenger-delivered paper filings for the Commission's Secretary are accepted between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. by the FCC's mailing contractor at 9050 Junction Drive, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701. All hand deliveries must be held together with rubber bands or fasteners. Any envelopes and boxes must be disposed of before entering the building. Commercial courier deliveries (any deliveries not by the U.S. Postal Service) must be sent to 9050 Junction Drive, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701. Filings sent by U.S. Postal Service First-Class Mail, Priority Mail, and Priority Mail Express must be sent to 45 L Street NE, Washington, DC 20554. <E T="03">People with Disabilities.</E> To request materials in accessible formats for people with disabilities (braille, large print, electronic files, audio format), send an email to <E T="03">fcc504@fcc.gov</E> or call the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau at 202-418-0530. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Thomas Eng, Engineer, Policy and Licensing Division, Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, (202) 418-0019, <E T="03">Thomas.Eng@fcc.gov,</E> or Brenda Boykin, Deputy Chief, Policy and Licensing Division, Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, (202) 418-2062, <E T="03">Brenda.Boykin@fcc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's Sixth Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking ( <E T="03">FNPRM</E> ), FCC 25-22, in PS Docket No. 07-114, adopted on March 27, 2025, and released on March 28, 2025. The full text of this document is available at <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-proposes-improvements-wireless-e911-location-accuracy-rules.</E> Pursuant to §§ 1.415 and 1.419 of the Commission's rules, 47 CFR 1.415, 1.419, interested parties may file comments and reply comments on or before the dates indicated on the first page of this document. Comments may be filed using the Commission's Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS). See Electronic Filing of Documents in Rulemaking Proceedings, 63 FR 24121 (1998), <E T="03">https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1998-05-01/pdf/98-10310.pdf.</E> The Commission will treat this proceeding as a “permit-but-disclose” proceeding in accordance with the Commission's <E T="03">ex parte</E> rules. Persons making <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations must file a copy of any written presentation or a memorandum summarizing any oral presentation within two business days after the presentation (unless a different deadline applicable to the Sunshine period applies). Persons making oral <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations are reminded that memoranda summarizing the presentation must (1) list all persons attending or otherwise participating in the meeting at which the <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentation was made, and (2) summarize all data presented and arguments made during the presentation. If the presentation consisted in whole or in part of the presentation of data or arguments already reflected in the presenter's written comments, memoranda, or other filings in the proceeding, the presenter may provide citations to such data or arguments in his or her prior comments, memoranda, or other filings (specifying the relevant page and/or paragraph numbers where such data or arguments can be found) in lieu of summarizing them in the memorandum. Documents shown or given to Commission staff during <E T="03">ex parte</E> meetings are deemed to be written <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations and must be filed consistent with rule § 1.1206(b). In proceedings governed by rule § 1.49(f) or for which the Commission has made available a method of electronic filing, written <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations and memoranda summarizing oral <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations, and all attachments thereto, must be filed through the electronic comment filing system available for that proceeding, and must be filed in their native format ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> .doc, .xml, .ppt, searchable .pdf). Participants in this proceeding should familiarize themselves with the Commission's <E T="03">ex parte</E> rules. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Synopsis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> In the <E T="03">FNPRM,</E> we propose to strengthen our wireless 911 location accuracy rules to put more actionable location information in the hands of Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) and first responders. In the <E T="03">FNPRM,</E> we propose to focus our approach on making the information available to PSAPs more valuable and directly applicable to incident response. Better location information from the outset of a 911 call translates to time saved during a response, and that time saved translates to lives saved. From the handsets in consumers' hands, to the provider networks and technologies used to derive and deliver location data to the PSAPs, to the equipment and systems used by the PSAPs, our goal is to encourage cooperation and collaboration among all parties involved to achieve the ultimate goal of better location accuracy, delivered as quickly and reliably as possible, to every PSAP nationwide. In 2015, the Commission adopted comprehensive location accuracy rules requiring CMRS (Commercial Mobile Radio Service) providers to provide either (1) coordinate-based (horizontal and vertical) location information or (2) dispatchable location information, with wireless 911 calls. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> In the <E T="03">Fourth Report and Order</E> and subsequent orders in this proceeding, the Commission established minimum horizontal and vertical accuracy requirements and a timetable for their implementation, and required that technologies used to meet minimum accuracy thresholds be validated by testing in an independent test bed. Since 2015, these requirements have led to significant improvements in the accuracy and actionability of caller location information delivered to PSAPs with wireless 911 calls. However, progress has fallen short in some areas. First, while CMRS providers have tested z-axis technologies in the test bed and are now using these technologies to deliver z-axis information to PSAPs, experience to date indicates that the z-axis information PSAPs are receiving with individual calls is frequently not actionable due to lack of precision and/or the information being delivered in a format that is not easily usable. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> Second, issues have arisen about the transparency of the industry test bed process and whether current testing methodologies used to validate z-axis technologies adequately model real-world conditions. Third, while the Commission's rules require CMRS providers to deliver dispatchable location—public safety's preferred solution—whenever technically feasible, the number of wireless 911 calls currently being delivered with dispatchable location is very small compared to the number of calls delivered with coordinate-based location information. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> While coordinate-based location information remains acceptable when providing dispatchable location is not technically feasible, we seek comment on how industry, handset manufacturers, carriers, and public safety can work collaboratively toward improvement, and how we can continue to increase the amount of dispatchable location being derived and delivered to PSAPs. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">Wireless E911 Location Accuracy Requirements,</E> PS Docket No. 07-114, Fourth Report and Order, 30 FCC Rcd 1259 (2015), 80 FR 11806 (Mar. 4, 2015) ( <E T="03">Fourth Report and Order</E> ), <E T="03">corrected by</E> Erratum (PSHSB Mar. 3, 2015). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  Letter from Jeffrey S. Cohen, Chief Counsel, Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials International, Inc. (APCO), to Marlene Dortch, Secretary, FCC, PS Docket No. 07-114 et al., at 2 (filed Jan. 31, 2024) (APCO Jan. 31, 2024 <E T="03">Ex Parte</E> ) (“The Commission's rules require wireless carriers to provide a height estimate for 9-1-1 callers expressed as a `height above ellipsoid' . . . . Few 9-1-1 emergency communications centers (ECCs) have the resources to even explore how to make use of HAE-based vertical information . . . .”); <E T="03">see also</E> Letter from Jeffrey S. Cohen, Chief Counsel, APCO, to Marlene Dortch, Secretary, FCC, PS Docket No. 07-114 and WC Docket No. 18-336, at 1 (filed Sept. 6, 2022) (APCO Sept. 6, 2022 <E T="03">Ex Parte</E> ) (“APCO reiterated that ECCs need ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 264k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━