Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Gov. Lolo Matalasi Moliga has informed the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that American Samoa does not charge and collect fees from the public for its 9-1-1 emergency system, which is fully funded by local revenue.

“There are no 9-1-1 fees collected in American Samoa and thus no funds to divert,” Lolo said in a Feb. 13th letter to FCC’s Commissioner Mike O’Reilly. “Our 9-1-1 system is fully funded by our general fund and budgeted by the Department of Public Safety.”

Because American Samoa didn’t respond to federal questions last year on the use of 911 fees collected from consumers for calendar year 2018, O’Reilly in a Feb. 3rd letter requested the governor to answer three questions: Why it didn’t respond to FCC on the matter for 2018; what steps it has taken to provide the FCC with the information; and, does it collect the 9-1-1 fees and divert these funds to other functions? If so, how much was diverted in 2018, and for what functions?

O’Reilly had informed Lolo that American Samoa’s 2018 filing - for calendar year 2017 — “indicated that your jurisdiction does not collect 9-1-1 fees from consumers, meaning that unless this has changed, filing this information with the Commission should not be a difficult or time-consuming process.”

He stressed the importance of this report, which is filed by all states and territories, and required by federal law. The report is than submitted to Congress, but American Samoa was the only jurisdiction that didn’t response last year.

In his reply letter, the governor explained that the delay in providing the requested information “is regrettable but is due in part to significant staff turnover. Your patience and consideration of this situation is much appreciated.”

The governor’s response letter also included the required FCC form on Annual Collection of Information related to the collection and use of 911 and E911 fees by American Samoa. The form was prepared and signed by the governor’s legal counsel William Ledoux.

He explained that the 9-1-1 service is provided by DPS within its regularly budgeted resources and American Samoa does not charge or collect fees from customers for this service, which is housed at the DPS headquarters.

It also explained that there is a back-up 9-1-1 system at the Emergency Operations Center.

Additionally, there are “two full-time and no part-time tele-communicators, although DPS still requires six more full-time employees for this position.” Furthermore, the system does not include voice recording of calls but can verify caller ID’s and produced transcripts of the conversations.”

It further explains that the Power 9-1-1 system used at DPS is an integrated Intelligent Workstation (IWS) that provides call takers with on screen control of both landlines and wireless calls in a wide variety of telephony equipment.

In layman’s term, it says that all telephone calls are answered via a computer screen with several options of call routing, patching or forwarding.

American Samoa provided identical responses and information in their previous FCC reports, which are all available public online (www.fcc.gov). Previous reports were prepared, signed and submitted by the governor’s previous legal counsel, who resigned last year and moved to the US.

Between Jan. 1st and Dec. 31st, 2018, the 9-1-1 system received 24,618 calls through the landline and 31,656 calls through wireless, according to the 2018 report.