On December 16, APCO President Jack Varnado, testified before the House Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee at a hearing titled “Legislative Improvements to Public Safety Communications in the United States.” Varnado emphasized the urgent need to modernize the nation’s 9-1-1 systems to NG9-1-1, noting that “today’s 9-1-1 calls are answered using yesterday’s 9-1-1 technology,” but with Congress’ support “we can bring 9-1-1 into the 21st century.”
Congressman Troy Carter (D-LA), co-lead on the Next Generation 9-1-1 Act (H.R. 6505), offered a warm introduction, thanking Varnado for sharing his expertise and underscoring the importance of resilient public safety communications, particularly in disaster-prone states like Louisiana. Rep. Carter highlighted the bipartisan legislation’s goal of modernizing 9-1-1 infrastructure to “reduce response times and equip first responders with the best digital tools available.”
Varnado also stressed the importance of ensuring the public can reach 9-1-1 in all circumstances. He offered support for the Emergency Reporting Act (H.R. 5200) to provide improved transparency during outages impacting 9-1-1 service and the Kari’s Law Reporting Act (H.R. 5201) to ensure that the requirements passed by Congress in 2018 to ensure direct access to 9-1-1 are fully implemented and functioning as intended.
APCO appreciates the strong, bipartisan focus on strengthening emergency response represented in this hearing and looks forward to building on this momentum to advance legislation to support public safety communications.
