FCC Close to Action on Wireless Location Accuracy

摘要

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is expected to circulate within the next few weeks a nlong-awaited order on location-accuracy rules for wireless, based on proposals by AT&T and nVerizon Wireless and incorporating changes sought in by T-Mobile, industry and FCC officials nsaid. Last week, the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials International n(APCO) and the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) filed a letter at the ncommission endorsing the tweaks sought in a June 16 letter by T-Mobile to AT&T's proposal nfor GSM-based carriers. The Public Safety Bureau has started to brief eighth-floor officials on nthe order. In 2008, APCO and NENA submitted location-accuracy proposals with Verizon nWireless for CDMA and with AT&T for GSM. n nThe FCC never acted on the proposals, but it did impose the rules as conditions in approving nVerizon Wireless's acquisition of Alltel and the Sprint Nextel-Clearwire partnership. Most nrecently, T-Mobile sought changes to deal with problems presented by conditions in rural nareas. "For T-Mobile, the greatest challenge with respect to location accuracy has been in nrural areas where sites are sparsely deployed and/or located along traffic corridors, which nT-Mobile is addressing through its ongoing transition to A-GPS technology," the ncarrier said. T-Mobile believes "it can meet the AT&T Proposal's standard of 300 [meters] for n90% of calls in 85% of counties, by the end of the 8th year after the effective date of the rules n(Benchmark 4), provided that this standard applies only to accuracy measurements of outdoor ncalls," the carrier said. "T-Mobile understands that this was the assumption underlying nAT&T's proposal."