GATINEAU – As Telus said last Monday during the CRTC’s N911 hearing, incumbent telcos believe that they are the logical choice as providers of next-generation 911 (NG911) services.
MTS noted in its opening remarks Wednesday that given the complexities involved with transitioning to NG911 from the current systems, it’s best to stick with what is known. Besides, the telcos have the PSAP (public safety access point) relationships, infrastructure and processes already in place for 911.
“There is no reason to believe that this existing framework would not work for NG911. In fact, retaining the same model would expedite a reliable, resilient and responsible transition to NG911,” said Grainne Grande, director of regulatory at MTS.
Bell Canada echoed those comments in its appearance. “Rather than attempt to fix what isn't broken, we believe the Commission should continue to leverage the current model, which makes ILECs responsible for the provision of 911 service,” said Robert Malcolmson, senior vice-president of regulatory affairs at BCE Inc.
Under questioning, Phil Gauvin, Bell’s senior legal counsel for regulatory affairs, said it’s important to consider the time frame associated with conducting a competitive bidding process. The RFP will have to provide so much information that has to be gathered – location of PSAPs, their network connectivity needs, the differences in how each ILEC does 911, the standards to which a third-party would be held and others, all the while ensuring that national security is protected.
“I think we might be dreaming if we think it’s going to be done in two or three years.” – Phil Gauvin, Bell Canada
“So, defining those measures is going to take time,” said Gauvin. “For sure we’re dreaming in six months. I think we might be dreaming if we think it’s going to be done in two or three years.”
When it comes to the funding of NG911, Bell said the ultimate tariff setting process wouldn’t be done until after the next gen technology and processes are introduced. But this would be done is stages. A trial of NG911 would reveal costs involved after which a “nuts to bolts” cost assessment of the new system would be done.
As for the actual tariff rate, Bell said it’s likely to remain what it is today.
“What we can confidently say is that it won’t be a doubling of the cost. So it’s $0.13 per line now with the accesses today. We anticipate that the end state is going to be that or less, probably less. How much less, we don’t know,” said Gauvin.
SaskTel also said there is no need to change the current funding model for the transition to NG911, but rather it’s better to look at the costs of the next generation network in the future. This will require new cost studies, it said, adding “the new rate must be compensatory for the costs incurred on an ongoing basis for the new network.”
The Crown Corp also acknowledged that as more consumers continue their move to IP-only devices and use text and video calling, the Commission may need to consider new ways to levy a 911 fee on Canadians.
Throughout the hearing, commissioners wondered when new 911 communications methods, such as more effective texting, video calling and others, would become available. For Shaw Communication’s Freedom Mobile (formerly Wind Mobile), the company said text-to-911, via real-time text could be made available by wireless carriers on the same day as NG911 goes live.
Ed Antecol, VP of regulatory and carrier relations at Freedom Mobile, noted the wireless industry is already well-positioned to provide NG911 services, including the transmission of feature-rich multimedia. This is because Canada’s wireless carriers have or will have IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) cores in their network, which are capable of handing voice, text and video in a single communications session.
“We have certainly heard various complaints about text with 911, and it's not new from this hearing – and so our view is that things like real time text should be ready to go day one when we convert over an NG911 PSAP and shouldn't wait for a later date,” he said.
There are some caveats, though. There needs to be a sufficient number of PSAPs NG911 enabled in a region before making the switch.
“The example I would give you is Toronto. You can't have the Toronto PSAP NG911 ready and operating in an NG911 environment and not Brampton and Oakville PSAPs as well, because there'd be a huge amount of confusion in the GTA area,” said Antecol. As clarification, he added that PSAPs in southwestern Ontario or eastern Ontario would all have to be NG911 enabled before offering text to 911.
A decision from this hearing is expected in the spring.
