Emergency Reporting Act

This bill requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to investigate and report on emergency communications outages (e.g., 9-1-1 outages).

Specifically, the FCC must publish a general report on (1) the volume and nature of 9-1-1 outages that are not required to be reported under current outage notification rules, (2) the value and practicality of including visual information in outage notifications from communications providers, and (3) recommended changes to FCC rules to address these issues.

Separately, the FCC must hold annual public hearings on events for which the Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS) was activated for at least a week. (DIRS is a reporting system that is activated during severe weather and other events impacting communications service. It enables communications providers to report outages and other degradations to service.) After each such hearing, the FCC must issue a report that includes information about the number, duration, and nature of all associated outages, along with recommendations for improving the resiliency of affected communications services or networks. Such reports must generally be made public on the FCC website.

Summary by the Congressional Research Service.