A bill that sets up a funding mechanism for 911 emergency service for cellular-phone users could reach a vote on the floor of the state Legislature as soon as this week.
The legislation would create funding for the state’s wireless telecommunications firms to implement global-positioning technology that locates a cellular-phone user’s location within 10 meters. The Federal Commission of Communications has mandated that wireless telecommunications companies work together with local 911 public-safety answering points to incorporate global-positioning systems into responses to emergency calls from cell phones. Under the FCC mandate, wireless firms weren’t allowed to set up the technology until state government organized mechanisms to fund the enhancement.
Wisconsin’s legislators have been shy about creating anything new in the wake of the state budget crisis. Some say increased property taxes aren’t the answer, in light of Wisconsin’s already high tax rate, but some lawmakers say a surcharge placed on cell-phone users’ bills because of the 911 service could be perceived as a tax.
“This bill gives the public service commission the ability to put on this additional surcharge to cell-phone users’ bills,” said Bill Esbeck, executive director of the Wisconsin State Telecommunications Association. “That’s the mechanism that seems to be the fairest in the eyes of the legislators pushing it through.”
Esbeck said the WSTA has three divisions: local landline phone companies, Internet service providers and wireless providers. Esbeck said the WSTA wireless division is supportive of the bill as it stands.
“Our members want to be able to provide this public service, but as it is in response to a federal mandate, we don’t think we should be saddled with the entire cost of the technology,” Esbeck said. “There has to be a funding mechanism in place for those requests.”
But some say the plan is flawed and will burden property taxpayers, even though the money for the global-positioning technology will come from surcharges.
“The information comes only to this one point, and under the bill, it’s the community’s responsibility to dispatch that information to the first responders,” Rich Eggleston, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Alliance of Cities, said. “That means they won’t have that information unless they pay for it themselves.”
Eggleston said the cell-phone enhancement would be an improvement, but the transfer of information from dispatch center to dispatch center would still be problematic.
“All the 911 wireless calls to every county would come through one dispatch center,” Eggleston said. “So then the issue becomes, how do you get the information needed to the dispatchers at the centers that will be responding?”
Eggleston said other states, including New York, have addressed this inadequacy in their plans with surcharges that were already a part of cell-phone users’ bills.
“There are over 100 911-response centers in the state, and not all of them would get funded,” Eggleston said. “People don’t want their emergency services toyed with.”
Esbeck said telecommunications companies could start setting up the global-positioning technology as soon as the bill was passed.
Esbeck said the bill was passed out of committee and may make it to the floor as early as Thursday. The bill may also have to undergo the review of other committees, which could delay a vote on it.
