NENA: The 911 Association yesterday announced that the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) fully approved the third—and latest—version of i3, the IP-based NENA standard for next-generation 911 (NG911) networking and core services.

Earlier this year, the fact that ANSI had not approved Version 3 of the i3 standard was a point of contention, because legislation proposing $15 billion in federal funding to accelerate NG911 deployment throughout the U.S. would have required that the money be spent on solutions accredited by standards bodies like ANSI.

Today, the significance of the ANSI approval of i3 is not as clear, as the previous NG911 funding language for “commonly accepted standards” does not specifically cite ANSI, so the fact that it is a NENA standard could meet the standard. In addition, the NG911 funding proposal—currently reduced to $10 billion—currently is part of the $3.5 trillion budget-reconciliation package that faces some notable political challenges to becoming a reality… READ MORE