Emergency Reporting Act

If enacted, this bill would direct the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to improve how it reports on and responds to major disasters that disrupt phone and internet services. Specifically, the FCC would be required to hold annual public hearings and issue reports whenever a disaster causes its Disaster Information Reporting System to be activated for at least seven days. These hearings would include state and local government officials, residents from affected areas, emergency responders, and 9-1-1 directors.

The reports would document the scope of communication service outages during disasters, including the number and duration of disruptions to broadband internet, mobile phone service, and VoIP services. The reports would also examine how many emergency 9-1-1 calls were affected by the outages and provide recommendations for improving the resilience of communications networks. Additionally, the bill would require the FCC to investigate and report on whether providing visual information about outages to emergency dispatch centers would help them better respond to crises.