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November 1999
By
Daniel R. Sovocool
Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner LLP
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
A recent development in Washington has made it more likely that GPS-enabled wireless phones will evolve into the dominant telematics market over the next several years.
On September 15, 1999, the FCC amended certain rules regarding wireless 911 emergency location technology, a move which many insiders believe will smooth the way for widespread adoption of GPS-enabled handheld telephones.
On a related note, on October 26, 1999, President Clinton signed the Wireless Communications and Public Safety Act of 1999 (PL No. 106-81), which, among other things, provides wireless providers and users of 911 emergency services with the same level of immunity previously provided to wireline providers and users. While the Act does not explicitly address GPS technology, it does remove one more obstacle to widespread compliance with the FCC's E-911 mandate, discussed below.
Of course, there are still many obstacles, including the lack of a coherent cost recovery mechanism for wireless emergency location services, a subject that will likely be considered by the FCC shortly. These obstacles will continue to the subject of considerable debate in Washington and among the wireless carriers and vendors.
FCC RULE CHANGE
On September 15, the FCC amended its rules regarding the technology by which wireless carriers must comply with the agency's Phase II E-911 wireless location mandate. This move is perceived as favorable to companies developing handset-based position location technology for use in the wireless handset market, which many perceive to be the largest market for GPS technologies. One market research firm recently forecast that by 2003, 38 million cell phones will have location-specific functionality.
By way of brief background,
in 1996 the FCC enacted rules requiring that wireless carriers
set up systems by October 1, 2001, by which wireless callers
could be located to within 125 meters at least 67% of the
time. The key purpose of this rule was to allow emergency
dispatchers at public safety answering points (PSAPs) to
locate callers from wireless phones. This standard,
known as the E-911 Phase II standard, was intended to be
technology neutral, but seem to favor network-based solutions,
as opposed to GPS-enabled handset solutions.
Since then, competition has become heated between companies providing network-based solutions, that typically involve costly changes to a carrier's network to find a caller, but do not involve changing out the handsets currently in use, and GPS solutions, which do not require changes to the network but do require new or retrofitted handsets. The traditional objections to GPS-enabled handsets are that the cost of retrofitting millions of handsets currently in use is prohibitively expensive, and that GPS accuracies are poor in urban canyons, in-building locations, etc., due primarily to poor signal availability and multipath interference. However, because the cost of GPS chipsets has dropped dramatically, and because wireless phones typically have a short life cycle, the first objection is now seen as less of a barrier than initially thought. Furthermore, GPS accuracies have continued to improve, even in urban canyon environments. Thus, GPS technologies are increasingly being considered as a viable alternative to network-based solutions.
In its recent revision to the rules, the FCC acknowledged
the viability of GPS-based solutions by enacting new phase-in
requirements for both network-based solutions and GPS-enabled
handset solutions. Wireless carriers are required
to declare their technology choice by October 1, 2000.
Those that adopt the handset approach must begin selling
and activating ALI (Automatic Location Identification) capable
handsets by March 1, 2001; insure that at least 50% of all
handsets are ALI-capable by October 1, 2001; and insure
that 95% of all handsets are ALI-capable by October 1, 2002.
Carriers in areas where PSAP requests are received must
comply with more stringent guidelines. Carriers that
elect network-based solutions must deploy Phase II to 50%
of callers within six months of a PSAP request, and to 100%
of callers within 18 months.
Significantly, the accuracy requirements
for GPS-enabled handset are stricter than those for network-based
solutions. Under the new rule, the FCC tightened network-based
solution accuracies from 125 meters to 100 meters (at 67%
of the time), and 300 meters (at 95% of the time.) GPS-enabled
handsets must provide greater accuracies of 50 meters 67%
of the time, and 150 meters 95% of the time. Many
companies developing GPS-based solutions believe that the
agency's recognition of the greater accuracies that can
be achieved by GPS validates the GPS approach.
WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS AND PUBLIC SAFETY ACT OF 1999
The recently enacted Wireless
Communications and Public Safety Act of 1999 amends the
Communications Act of 1934 to direct the FCC and related
agencies to designate 911 as the universal emergency telephone
number within the United States.
Of particular interest are the
provisions of the Act that give providers and users of emergency
wireless service the same level of liability immunity as
that previously afforded providers and users of wireline
services. Up until now, wireless immunity was left
to a patchwork of state regulation; some states provide
immunity while many others did not. Leaving the matter
to state regulation did not make particular sense, and was
seen as a potential barrier to compliance with the FCC's
E-911 mandate.
The new statute is a step in the
right direction, but many obstacles to E-911 compliance
still remain. For example, according to Communications
Today, a recent progress report has found that only 7 percent
of the country's PSAPs (there are more than 5,000 of them)
have agreed with carriers as to what technology to use for
relaying 911 information. On the subject of cost recovery,
only about half of the states have adopted 911 cost recovery
mechanisms, a prerequisite for compliance. This latter
obstacle may be resolved at the federal level; the FCC will
likely consider a "bill and keep" plan that will
shift the financial burden to carriers (and ultimately to
consumers) and eliminate the necessity of state E-911 cost
recovery laws.
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For more information about the issues covered in this report, please contact Daniel R. Sovocool in our San Francisco office at 415-369-7340 or at dsovocool@thelen.com or contact your Thelen attorney. For more information about Thelen's Construction and Government Contracts Department, click here.
©1999 Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner LLP
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