Advocates say it’s particularly important to have resilient landlines because cell coverage in the state remains spotty. Dozens of communities currently have no signal at all.
Last time the state checked — in 2007 — about 40 percent of the remote switches that connect home landline phones to 911 response centers were vulnerable to “isolation,” meaning that if a line goes down for some reason, there is no alternate route for the call to go through.
Members of the E911 board, composed mostly of representatives of the law enforcement and first responder community, voted unanimously to petition the Public Utility Commission, which regulates telecoms, to begin a process to address the problem. The dominant landline operator is Consolidated Communications, which also operates the E911 network.
“The Executive Director shall take the necessary actions that will result in a petition to the Public Utility Commission for an appropriate proceeding to identify the current status, location and impact of isolation vulnerabilities and to identify potential solutions, including costs, for the resolution and/or mitigation of the isolation risk,” said the board resolution.
Barbara Neal, the executive director, said she didn’t know exactly when the proceeding might begin. She spoke about the issue before the House Energy and Technology Committee on Friday.
“The 911 board feels it is the wireline carriers responsibility to fix their network,” she said, “but that’s a black and white statement without considering the impact to that wireline carrier who has a mechanism for charging the state back for these kinds of solutions.”
Neal said she had heard estimates that it could cost millions to fix the issue, but that part of the purpose of the PUC proceedings would be to get a more specific estimate. She said during a E911 board meeting in October that the state should be wary of pursuing solutions that could be costly to the state, especially because the affected areas “definitely represent a low call volume.”
There were about 50 reported E911 outages in the state over the past two years, but as few as four were due to isolation, Neal says. All reported incidents of isolation occurred on Consolidated’s network. There are no rules requiring providers to report isolation incidents, but Neal said Friday that she has no reason to believe that anyone is underreporting.
A 2007 report from Corey Chase, a DPS telecommunications analyst, said there were 23 reported isolation incidents in the previous two years, “but based on extrapolation there may have been up to 40.”
The E911 board is amid negotiations, to be concluded this month, for another five-year contract with a vendor who will manage the emergency landline network. Consolidated is bidding on the contract.
Stephen Whitaker, a public telecoms advocate, has been pressuring the board and lawmakers to make sure the isolation issue is resolved before a new contract is signed.
Rep. Robin Chesnut-Tangerman, P-Middletown Springs, ranking member of the House Energy and Technology committee, was the sole lawmaker who attended Thursday’s board meeting. He asked why the board would not take this opportunity to address the issue.
“It’s now or five years from now,” he said, “and in world of telecommunications that’s an eternity.”
Gary Taylor, chair of the E911 Board and chief of police in St. Albans City, said some people were using the contract as a “mechanism to force whoever the vendor’s going to be to fix this problem for us,” adding that the state could not wait to resolve the isolation issue before signing a new contract.
“First we need to know the facts, exactly how extensive is it, where is it, and are there resolutions to it that are achievable and affordable, so I think we feel like we don’t have the time to just not have a provider moving forward,” he said, adding that the current contract expires in a year and it takes that long to get a new provider up and running.
Neal has argued before committees in both the Senate and House that the provider contract is not the venue to address the issue, as isolation originates in parts of the network owned and operated by private firms — mostly Consolidated — and not in parts of the system that are part of the E911 contract.
If the state wants to force Consolidated to build redundant lines to help ensure 911 access, that could be done in its “Incentive Regulation Plan” with the company, which operates as a privately owned utility. The Department of Public Service is currently investigating Consolidated for its poor service.
Whitaker said he believes the process to address isolation issues will drag on until after Consolidated reups its regulation agreement, which expires at the end of the year. “I think the PUC process will take a whole year, the way they’re moving on things,” he said.
He said state agencies need to focus efforts on areas of the state where there is no cell signal and where isolation fully cuts off communities. To do that, the state needs to conduct a propagation study identifying where cell carriers are actually delivering service. A state drive test found that coverage claims by providers were wildly inflated.
“The advocacy role would be, get the information and inform the legislators about their options to find the levers, the few remaining levers” to force providers to improve and expand their services, Whitaker said.
Peter Bluhm, a former hearing officer for the Public Service Board (now the PUC), called in to Thursday’s board meeting. He talked about how he drafted rules in 2007 that would have required landline providers to build networks that guarantee that 911 calls get through.
“I find myself disappointed that my fellows at PSB did not do more with the rule,” he said. Bluhm added that nothing had been done about the issue since.
Clay Purvis, director for telecommunications at DPS, said without more research it was unfair to say that no progress has been made.
One of the issues in 2007, Bluhm said, was that Verizon, which owned the phone lines at the time, said it could not be required to do more than what was in its incentive regulation plan.
Bluhm encouraged the board to look into ways to leverage other communications infrastructure — like television cable, broadband and VOIP connections — that could be used as backup connections if the landlines go down.
That would require linking Consolidated remote switches to equipment owned by cable, internet and mobile phone providers. Smaller regional providers also own some of the switches.
A similar suggestion came up during the isolation discussion in 2007. Peter Zamore, an attorney representing Verizon, wrote a letter to the DPS saying that the company did not believe it should be responsible for pursuing any of the solutions under consideration.
He said Verizon was not willing to conduct a review of the potential costs of building routing alternatives until other options were explored. It was not going to pay to build redundant lines because the state did not have the authority to force the company to make network investments.
If the state decided to seek alternate methods to reconnect calls once they reach Verizon remotes, the company said “it would be inappropriate to require Verizon VT to be responsible for identifying the cost of alternatives, because most of the alternatives … do not involve Verizon VT facilities.”
Michael Shultz, vice president of regulatory and public policy for Consolidated, said in a statement Thursday that the company “takes the delivery of 911 services very seriously.”
He said the company supported the idea of state agencies convening a workshop, but added, “we encourage them to collect the most current and accurate information on all 911 calls and to include all originating service providers, such as Wireless and VoIP providers, in this important discussion.”
