The NAD is pleased to share that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) expects to consider new rules for text-to-911 at its August 2014 Open Meeting. In January, the FCC adopted a policy statement that outlined goals for text-to-911. The FCC also worked with the four largest wireless carriers to voluntarily commit to supporting text-to-911 on their networks by May 15, 2014.
Once wireless carriers support text-to-911 on their networks, then 911 centers across the country can receive text-to-911 calls. Of course, many 911 centers have yet to update their systems to process these texts. The NAD is working hard to encourage 911 centers to accept text-to-911 texts.
We encourage members of the community to attend the August Open Meeting on August 8th at 10:30 AM at the FCC to support this important issue. This meeting will also be shown live online at FCC.gov/live with captions.
The NAD is deeply appreciative of Chairman Wheeler’s commitment to our community’s accessibility needs. In less than a year at the helm of the FCC, he has taken on many important issues to our community:
- January 2014 Open Meeting, set path for widespread text-to-911 deployment
- February 2014 Open Meeting, adopted closed captioning quality standards
- July 2014 Open Meeting, required closed captioning of IP-delivered video clips
- August 2014 Open Meeting, expected to create text-to-911 rules