H.R. 5200
The Emergency Reporting Act, also known as H.R. 5200, mandates the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to investigate and report on communication outages, particularly those affecting emergency services like 9-1-1. The FCC is required to publish reports on the frequency and types of outages not currently covered by existing rules, evaluate the usefulness of including visual information in outage notifications, and suggest changes to improve regulations. Additionally, the FCC must conduct annual public hearings following significant events that activate the Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS) for at least a week. These hearings will assess the outages and provide recommendations for enhancing the resilience of communication networks, with findings made publicly available on the FCC's website.