Monday, August 7, 2023 | 3:30 – 4:30 p.m.
Mark Reddish, APCO International, and Alison Venable, APCO International
APCO’s Government Relations team provided an overview of some of APCO’s top advocacy priorities. The presentation featured updates on the progress of important legislative issues, such as securing federal funding for Next Generation 9-1-1, establishing health and wellness resources for 9-1-1 professionals, and APCO’s efforts to reclassify public safety telecommunicators at the federal level. During the presentation, the team noted that the PROTECT 9-1-1 Act (H.R. 2763), a bill that would create a grant program and other resources to address health and wellness for 9-1-1 professionals, was reintroduced in April. Reddish also stated the legislative language developed by the Public Safety Next Generation 9-1-1 Coalition had been included in a larger legislative package that recently passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee with unanimous support.
Regarding APCO’s regulatory priorities, the team discussed recently adopted and proposed updates to the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) rules regarding 9-1-1 outage notifications, 9-1-1 location accuracy, wireless emergency alerts, and public safety spectrum policies. Among other things, the team discussed how recent rule changes on the 4.9 GHz band re-focused the band on public safety use and outlined recommendations APCO provided to the FCC on how to make the band more useful for public safety agencies and move forward with a reasonable approach to sharing the band with non-public safety users.
Submitted by Alison Venable
