House Subcommittee Advances Bills on Next Generation 911, FirstNet Oversight

WASHINGTON, Jan. 15, 2026 – The House Communications and Technology Subcommittee advanced Thursday six bipartisan bills on public safety communications.

They included measures that would create a federal grant program for Next Generation 911 upgrades, create a new Commerce Department office to manage oversight of the agency’s nationwide first responder network, and direct the Federal Communications Commission to review its outage reporting policies.

All six bills were passed by voice vote. They would need to clear the full Energy and Commerce Committee before being taken up by the full House.

Next Generation 9-1-1 Act (H.R. 6505)

The Next Generation 9-1-1 Act would create a grant program for NG911 upgrades. NG911 is an internet-based system that allows emergency call centers to receive more accurate location data, plus texts, photos, and videos.

Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., chairman of the subcommittee and a co-sponsor of the bill, said lawmakers were “still working on finding an appropriate dollar amount to fund this program. It’s critical we balance the need to fund this important program while making sure we maintain fiscal responsibility.”

Public Safety Communications Act (H.R. 1519)

The Public Safety Communications Act would stand up a new office within NTIA to manage NG911 grants and manage the FirstNet Authority, the NTIA body that oversees its nationwide first responder network, among other things.

The Fraternal Order of Police and the pro-FirstNet Public Safety Broadband Technology Association had opposed the bill. The FOP feared the current FirstNet board, which FOP said has been “highly responsive” to law enforcement input, would have less authority under the bill’s provisions.

Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla., the bill’s lead sponsor, sought to defend the bill from the law enforcement groups’ concerns.

“NTIA already has the responsibilities related to FirstNet and NextGen 911, but those responsibilities are not clearly defined in statute. This bill fixes that,” she said. “Our bill simply clarifies NTIA’s existing management and oversight role, including conducting regular audits.”

Emergency Reporting Act (H.R. 5200)

The bill would direct the FCC, after holding a public hearing on the issue, to produce a report tallying activities of its disaster reporting system from the previous year.

The agency activates its Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS) during events like floods and hurricanes and collects daily information from telecom providers on outages and recovery efforts.  

The bill would also direct the agency to review its disaster reporting practices and propose changes aimed at making the collected information more useful and capturing more 911 outages.

The FCC delayed publishing in the Federal Register a January 2025 order requiring the use of 13 multilingual emergency alert templates until last month, leading to some criticism from Democratic lawmakers and FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez. 

The Federal Register publication says the template provisions are “delayed indefinitely,” but the agency said in a Dec. 18 public notice that providers had until June 12, 2028, to fully comply with the template requirements. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr emphasized at an oversight hearing Wednesday that alert originators are not prohibited from supporting alerts in multiple languages.

Mystic Alerts Act (H.R. 7022)

A response to deadly floods in Texas that killed 27 people last year, the Mystic Alerts Act would direct the FCC to initiate a rulemaking that would ultimately allow emergency alerts to be delivered to mobile phones via satellite.

Kari’s Law Reporting Act (H.R. 5201)

The bill would direct the FCC to produce a report on the implementation of the Kari’s Law Act of 2017, which requires buildings and campuses to allow 911 dialing without a prefix.

Lulu’s Law (H.R. 2076)

The bill would require the FCC to issue an order saying that emergency alerts can be transmitted in the event of a shark attack.