H.R. 5200 — Emergency Reporting Act

This section directs the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to hold at least one public hearing not later than one year after enactment—and annually thereafter—on communications outages during events in the preceding year for which the Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS; i.e., FCC system requiring providers to report outages during presidentially declared disasters or emergencies) was activated for seven or more days, considering input from affected governments, residents, providers, experts, utilities, infrastructure companies, and first responders. Not later than 120 days after each hearing, the FCC must issue and publish a report (excluding confidential information) on the number and duration of outages of broadband internet access service, interconnected VoIP service, commercial mobile service, and commercial mobile data service; approximate users and infrastructure affected; outages impairing emergency communications centers (i.e., public safety answering points or similar facilities); and resiliency recommendations, drawing on DIRS data and hearing input. This section further directs the FCC to investigate and publish a report not later than one year after enactment on (1) the public safety value of visual information in outage notifications to emergency communications centers; (2) unreported 9-1-1 outages below FCC thresholds; (3) the balance between such value and provider burden; and (4) recommended rule changes. This section states that it provides no additional FCC authority over broadband internet access service providers.