Sponsors (3)
The bill improves transparency and oversight of communications outages—helping emergency response and bringing stakeholder input—while imposing agency workload, leaving some data confidential, and potentially increasing compliance costs for providers.
Emergency responders and local governments will get clearer information about outages that block 9-1-1 caller location/number or call routing, helping speed fixes and improve emergency response.
Consumers and taxpayers will see public reports on broadband, VoIP, and mobile outage counts, durations, and estimated affected users, increasing transparency about service reliability.
Mandated public hearings force the FCC to solicit input from state and local governments, utilities, providers, consumer advocates, and academics, improving the relevance and legitimacy of outage policy.
Reports may withhold confidential business information, limiting the usefulness of published outage details for local and state planners and reducing the practical transparency of the data.
Annual hearings, reports, and a one‑year study will increase FCC workload and require staff time and funding, imposing costs on the agency (and potentially taxpayers) and stretching federal employees.
Investigations and potential rule changes (e.g., requiring visual information in outage notifications) could raise compliance and reporting costs for originating providers and utilities.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Directs the FCC to hold annual hearings and publish reports after prolonged Disaster Information Reporting System activations and to study improvements to outage reporting within one year.
Requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to hold annual public hearings and publish reports after prolonged activations (7+ days) of its Disaster Information Reporting System, summarizing outages (broadband, VoIP, commercial mobile voice/data), counts and durations, affected users/infrastructure, 9-1-1 impacts, and recommendations to improve resiliency. It also directs the FCC to complete, within one year, a study on improving outage reporting—including whether visual information from originating providers to emergency communications centers is valuable—and to recommend any rule changes to balance public-safety benefits and provider burden.
Official title: Emergency Reporting Act
Introduced September 8, 2025 by Doris Matsui · Last progress April 21, 2026