988 Texting Could Require More Staff: Administrator

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline "needs considerably more resources" at its crisis centers to respond to text and chat volume now, and will need more staffing and training when the ability to text to 988 is fully implemented nationwide, Lifeline administrator Vibrant Emotional Health emailed us Thursday. The FCC will vote Nov. 18 on setting a July 16 deadline for carriers to support texting to 988 (see 2110270049). The draft order was released Thursday.

Also issued was a proposed Further NPRM on an enhanced competition incentive program (ECIP) designed to help small carriers, tribes or rural consumers, and could boost open radio access networks. There's also an NRPM about allowing computer modeling of directional FM antenna verifications, and U.S. market approval for French IoT satellite constellation Kineis.

Under the 988 draft order, covered mobile carriers would have to support only SMS texts because Vibrant indicated it could receive and respond to those. The FCC said requiring covered text providers to support other text message formats like MMS and real-time text would be premature since Lifeline lacks the capability to receive them. The agency said in the future, text providers could have to support those formats and others if Lifeline indicates it can receive such formats. The order would have the Wireless Bureau by June 30, 2023, propose and seek comment on implementing parameters for text providers to add text message formats to 988 that Lifeline is capable of receiving.

Vibrant told us 38 Lifeline centers handle chat and text now. It said state and federal funding options "are being considered to support local and national Lifeline crisis chat/text resource needs."

The ECIP meanwhile is aimed at helping close the digital divide. “The proposals … taken together, will create new opportunities for small carriers and Tribal Nations to get access to spectrum, and will result in greater competition and expanded wireless deployment in rural areas, bringing more advanced wireless service including 5G to underserved communities,” the draft says.

The item proposes to allow “partition, disaggregation, and/or long-term leasing of covered geographic spectrum licenses between unaffiliated entities.” To qualify, at least half the spectrum would have to go to a small carrier or tribal nation, or be focused on serving rural markets. At least 25% of the licensed market area would have to involve a small carrier or federally recognized tribe, or be “a rural-focused transaction,” covering at least 300 contiguous square miles, the draft says.

Transactions under ECIP would get five-year license extensions and a one-year extension of construction requirements, or be subject to alternate rules for rural areas, the draft said. The draft also explores whether to require use of ORAN technology. “Should we tie ECIP benefits to the use of Open RAN in network deployment?” it asks: “If so, what level of use should we require, and how would parties demonstrate their use in their application?” Separate from the incentive program, the FNPRM seeks comment on “potential alternatives to population-based performance requirements for a variety of stakeholders” and whether to allow “reaggregation of partitioned and disaggregated licenses up to the original license size.”

The directional antenna draft NPRM tentatively concludes that requiring FM and low-power FM applicants to provide physical measurements rather than computer models to verify antenna patterns is “outdated.” It stems from a June petition by Dielectric, Jampro Antennas, Shively Labs, Radio Frequency Systems and the Educational Media Foundation, the draft says. There are “significant costs in time and money due to the required physical measurement of directional FM antennas” that can be saved through the use of computational modeling, said the petition.

The item would seek comment on allowing computer modeling for FM applicants, on whether there's a “voluntary consensus standard” on modeling software, and on whether the existing policies for interference disputes involving directional FM antennas are sufficient. “What safeguards, if any, are needed to prevent frivolous complaints of inaccurate FM directional pattern performance?” the draft asks.

Kineis' approval to operate the 400 MHz band would be conditioned upon it coordinating with other entities in the 400 MHz processing round that were licensed or granted U.S. market access. Otherwise, per the draft order, the spectrum will be divided among those operators.