Emergency Reporting Act

HR 5200 requires the Federal Communications Commission to investigate and publicly report on emergency communications outages, particularly 9-1-1 service failures. The bill directs the FCC to publish a comprehensive report examining outages not currently subject to mandatory reporting requirements, assess whether visual information should be included in outage notifications from communications providers, and recommend changes to FCC rules to address identified gaps. Additionally, the FCC must conduct annual public hearings following events that trigger activation of the Disaster Information Reporting System for at least one week, which occurs during severe weather and other incidents affecting communications services.

Following each annual hearing, the FCC must issue a detailed report documenting the number, duration, and nature of all outages that occurred during the triggering event, along with recommendations for improving the resilience of affected communications services and networks. These reports must be made publicly available on the FCC's website, creating a regular public record of emergency communications performance during major incidents and identifying areas where service reliability can be strengthened.