Months of scattered Nebraska 911 outages in August, September, November and most recently this month has prompted new legislation in Nebraska demanding faster deployment of next-generation 911 system upgrades and clearer accountability when service providers fall short. The bills proposed hope to accelerate the years-long transitioning of Nebraska to next-generation 911. The new legislation if promulgated into law would require service providers to file the same reports to the Public Service Commission (PSC) that they file to the Federal Communications Commission on 911 outages, and it gives the PSC 90 days from the first outage report being received to hold a public hearing.

Critics of the 911 outages and response to them have said the risk to public safety is real. It would set a six-month goal and a one-year deadline to finish the transition to data-rich 911, requiring companies to notify the state of any delays.

The bill would define a 911 outage as a “significant degradation in the ability of an end user to establish and maintain a channel of communications services as a result of failure or degradation in the performance” of a service network. Its main aim is to shorten the time it takes the PSC to gather reliable information from the telecommunications companies so that regulators and state lawmakers can respond more quickly to system problems and outages. Read more about this story on our LinkedIn page