FCC Adopts Rules to Promote Reliable Access to the 988 Lifeline

The Federal Communications Commission adopted rules to help ensure that the public has access to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline if a service outage occurs. The new rules:

• Require service providers that have a role in delivering 988 calls—including cable, satellite, wireless, wireline, interconnected VoIP providers, and those that provide capabilities to the 988 Lifeline—to report outages that potentially affect the 988 Lifeline to the Commission’s Network Outage Reporting System, similar to the Commission’s existing reporting requirement for outages that potentially affect 911.
• Require service providers to provide notice of such events to SAMHSA, the VA, and the 988 Lifeline administrator as well as updates on outages that last longer than two hours.
• Define reportable outages as those that result in a loss of the ability of the 988 Lifeline to receive, process, or forward calls, potentially affecting at least 900,000 user minutes and lasting at least 30 minutes in duration.