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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 111 / Friday, June 11, 2021 / Proposed Rules
communications preferences of consumers. Given the parallels between the Commissions efforts to promote text access to 911 and our proposals in this FNPRM, are there lessons learned in the context of establishing text-to-911 capability that would be instructive here? CTIA states that there are significant technical and policy differences between the national 988 service that will be administered by the Lifeline and the local 911
services that are administered by thousands of PSAPs. For example, unlike calls to 911, which carriers route to one of thousands of local PSAPs across the country based on the callers geographic location, all calls to 988 are routed to a central toll free number, and are then directed within the Lifeline network to a local crisis center. How might these or other differences between the 911 and 988 networks affect our proposal to adopt a text-to-988
requirement?

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B. Proposed Implementation of Text-to988
1. Scope of Text-to-988 Requirement 11. Text Formats. We seek comment on an appropriate scope of text messages that covered text providers must transmit to 988. At present, the Lifeline is capable of receiving text messages sent to the existing 10-digit number in short message service SMS format. The Commissions Truth in Caller ID rules define the term short message service or SMS as a wireless messaging service that enables users to send and receive short text messages, typically 160 characters or fewer, to or from mobile phones and can support a host of applications. We recognize, however, that our federal partners may incorporate additional capabilities for receiving and responding to text messages in the future. We seek to adopt a forward-looking, flexible scope that can expand with the capabilities of the Lifeline without unnecessarily burdening covered text providers by requiring support of formats that the Lifeline is not yet capable of receiving.
To that end, we propose 1 establishing a definition that sets the outer bound of text messages sent to 988 that covered text providers may be required to support; and 2 directing the Wireline Competition Bureau Bureau to identify text formats within the scope of that definition that the Lifeline can receive and thus covered text providers must support by routing to the 10-digit Lifeline number. We seek comment on this proposal in detail below.
12. First, we propose to define the outer bound of text messages that
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covered text providers may be required to transmit to 988 based on the definition of text message that Congress enacted in 2018 in the context of Truth in Caller ID requirements:
The term text message i means a message consisting of text, images, sounds, or other information that is transmitted to or from a device that is identified as the receiving or transmitting device by means of a 10-digit telephone number or N11 service code; ii includes a SMS message and a multimedia message service commonly referred to as MMS message; and iii does not includeI a real-time, two-way voice or video communication; or II a message sent over an IP-enabled messaging service to another user of the same messaging service, except a message described in clause ii.

The Commissions Truth in Caller ID
rules define MMS as a wireless messaging service that is an extension of the SMS protocol and can deliver a variety of media, and enables users to send pictures, videos, and attachments over wireless messaging channels. We seek comment on this proposed scope.
We believe this definition has several advantagesit incorporates multimedia messages; it is not limited to specific technologies; and it reflects a recent determination by Congress, albeit in a different policy context. For the purpose of our text-to-988 rules, we propose adding or 988 to the phrase 10-digit telephone number or N11 service code so that text messages from the Lifeline identified by the 3-digit code 988 are included within the scope of covered text providers obligations, and we seek comment on this proposal. We seek comment on whether using the Truth in Caller ID definition appropriately sets an outer bound that would achieve our goals of adopting a forward-looking, flexible scope that can expand with the capabilities of the Lifeline without unnecessarily burdening covered text providers.
13. We note that the Truth in Caller ID statutory definition of text message excludes real-time, two-way voice or video communications, as well as messages sent over . . . IP-enabled messaging services to another user of the same messaging service. If we adopt the Truth in Caller ID definition, we seek comment on how we should interpret each of these two exclusions here. Is there any reason to adopt a different interpretation of the relevant exclusions in this context compared to the Truth in Caller ID context? Would adopting the Truth in Caller ID
definition of text message, with the exclusions specified above, prevent us from possibly adding next-generation text messages to our requirements in the future?

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14. We also seek comment on alternative outer scopes of required texts. For instance, should we adopt the scope of our text-to-911 rules, which require providers to route a message, consisting of text characters, sent to the short code 911 and intended to be delivered to a PSAP by a covered text provider, regardless of the text messaging platform used? In the Textto-911 Second Report and Order, the Commission identified SMS and MMS
messages as examples of text messages included within the scope of this proposed rule. We seek comment on whether the Truth in Caller ID
definition, the text-to-911 definition, or another definition offers the best model here. We note that the Truth in Caller ID model is newer than the text-to-911
definition, originates with Congress rather than the Commission, and unlike the text-to-911 definition explicitly includes images, sounds, and other nontextual information. On the other hand, the Commission developed the text-to911 definition in a more analogous policy context than the Truth in Caller ID definition. Do these or other considerations suggest that one or the other model is superior?
15. Should we ensure that any definition we adopt encompasses nextgeneration forms of text messaging, such as MMS, Rich Communications Services RCS, and/or real-time text RTT, and what modificationsif anywould we need to make to the definitions we are considering to ensure that such forms are within our proposed scope? RCS has been described as a successor protocol to SMS, or as nextgeneration SMS. What are the fundamental differences between SMS, MMS, and RCS? How would the costs to implement SMS, MMS, and RCS
differ? The Commission has previously concluded that messages sent over other IP-enabled messaging services that are not SMS or MMSsuch as RCS
are excluded from the Truth in Caller ID definition of text message to the extent such messages are sent to other users of the same messaging service.
Would it be necessary to modify the Truth in Caller ID definition for our purposes to ensure that it includes RCS
or other next-generation services?
16. We also seek comment on whether we should ensure that our proposed outer bound definition of text message encompasses RTT. Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc., et al. have urged us to mandate the ability to reach 988 by RTT, noting that the Commission has acknowledged the benefits of RTT in crisis situations such as allowing for interruption and reducing the risk of crossed messages
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