Ensuring the Reliability and Resiliency of the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline; Rules Concerning Disruptions to Communications; Implementation of the National Suicide Hotline Improvement Act of 2018

In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (Commission) requires covered 988 service providers (a new category of service provider) and cable, satellite, wireless, wireline, and interconnected voice over internet protocol (VoIP) providers (originating service providers) to report outages that potentially affect the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the Commission's Network Outage Reporting System (NORS). The rules also require these entities to directly notify Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the 988 Lifeline administrator about outages that potentially affect a 988 special facility, and exercise special diligence to maintain accurate, up-to-date contact information for 988 special facilities, just as the Commission's rules require for 911 special facilities. The rules also allow SAMHSA and the VA to have direct read-only access to NORS consistent with the Commission's existing NORS outage information sharing procedures. These rules are adopted with the goal of ensuring that the Commission and those parties that provide life-saving crisis intervention services to people calling the 988 Lifeline receive timely and actionable information about 988 service outages that potentially affect those services' ability to meet the immediate health needs of people in suicidal crisis and mental health distress.