On January 7 APCO, NASNA and NENA jointly filed an ex parte with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) urging the agency to improve the rules for 9-1-1 outage notifications to emergency communications centers (ECCs). The groups collectively propose the creation of a secure, two-way outage dashboard to provide real-time, visual updates on 9-1-1 outages. As proposed, the outage dashboard would enable service providers to input information about outages in their networks and automatically notify ECCs. The outage dashboard would also enable ECCs to customize their notification preferences and quickly and efficiently obtain information about the outage. The filing requests the FCC require the service providers to implement, maintain and operate the outage dashboard at no cost to ECCs. APCO will continue to monitor and provide updates as the FCC reviews the proposal.
