ATIS ESIF Creates Subcommittee for Next Generation E-911 Standards

March 22, 2006 , TelecomNEXT, Las Vegas – ATIS today announced that the Emergency Services Interconnection Forum (ESIF) has established a new subcommittee to coordinate work in the IP domain that may have an impact on, or be impacted by, E9-1-1 or emergency services in general.

The mission of the ESIF Next Generation Emergency Services (NGES) Subcommittee is to coordinate emergency services needs and issues with and among standards development organizations and industry forums and committees, within and outside of ATIS. It will develop emergency services standards and other documents related to advance emergency services architectures, functions and interfaces for communications networks.

The initial goals of the ESIF NGES are to:

• Provide a liaison with global SDOs for the standards development coordination of NGES with 3GPP, ETSI and ITU. ESIF NGES will collaborate with other ATIS committees that are the primary channels to those SDOs.
• Coordinate standards development for NGES with other committees, including the ATIS TOPS NGN Focus Group, the Packet Technology and Systems Committee and the Wireless Technology and Systems Committee.
• Develop Stage 2 and Stage 3 standards based on NENA’s i3 Requirements and Functional Design in the context of the IMS/NGN.

“Ensuring emergency services in the evolving Next Generation Network (NGN) is crucial to the wide-spread deployment and consumer acceptance of IP services,” said Susan Miller, president and CEO of ATIS. “ATIS has an extensive presence with the SDO community, and ESIF is well-recognized within the emergency services arena as the leader for technical standards and procedures. By formalizing this role in the NGES Subcommittee, ESIF will be able to coordinate emergency service standards work and ensure the needs of North American service providers are addressed and met.”

About ATIS

ATIS is a technical planning and standards development organization that is committed to rapidly developing and promoting technical and operations standards for the communications and related information technologies industry worldwide using a pragmatic, flexible and open approach. Participants from more than 350 communications companies are active in ATIS’ 23 industry committees and Incubator Solutions Program. www.atis.org

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