FCC: VoIP Providers Must Provide 911 Services 496
acadiel writes "The Houston Chronicle is reporting that the FCC will require VoIP providers to provide 911 location services. This will mean extra $$$ that the VoIP providers will have to put out, which ultimately means extra $$$ that the consumer will have to put out. This is the first step in regulating an industry that should have been left alone..." I hope network end-points and physical location aren't going to be too tightly linked; one of the appeals of VoIP is using it from anywhere that has an adequate Internet connection.
All phone services should have 911 access! (Score:5, Interesting)
Vonage already provides 911 service (Score:5, Interesting)
Vonage [vonage.com] added this a while back, more info here [vonage.com] and oddly enough, my bill went down after they implemented it.
Go for it (Score:5, Interesting)
911 LOCATION, not just 911 and how will they know (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:911 is kinda important (Score:3, Interesting)
Just think of the issues that would be raised after a major emergency that could not be reported "I tried to call 911 but I couldn't connect..." That's when things would really start to hit the fan.
They can see a situation like this coming and they're trying to nip it at the bud.
VOIP is just a technology... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think what they mean is that if a VOIP system is connected to the publicly switched telephone network they must give access to local 911...
Here in canada rogers cable is offering telephone lines using VOIP on their cable system. I sure hope they offer access to the local 911...
Re:Vonage has 911 service already (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry. That's not 911, and it's far away from e911. Phone companies is required to provide the true e911. That means when you hit 911, you get connected immediately to the right call center servicing your area that has the capability to dispatch police, fire, and medical resources and your location data is automatically sent to that center as well.
911 call centers cannot be reached by mapping to any 10-digit number. There is no 10-digit number for them, they are simply known as 911 on the network within the region they serve. Vonage's immitation 911 depends on mapping 911 to a 10-digit number, so it can't find the call center and has to hope the police can help them. If you call a police department to report a fire, you will lose when-seconds-count time being bounced around while things burn.
If Vonage wants to compete with the phone companies, they have to have the same regulatory burdens that the FCC slaps on phone companies. It's only fair. If it means Vonage has to limit portability and/or raise prices to
You have to specify a location... (Score:1, Interesting)
I like the idea of being able to take my home phone number with me wherever there's a decent internet connection (family/hotels/etc.). If I make a 911 call on vacation (who knows, emergency situations aren't conducive to rational thought), the EMS/Police/Fire authority is going to go to my home and be rather upset my VoIP phone told them I was at home. If you don't have 911 set up, you don't have this concern.
Mandatory and automatic (Score:2, Interesting)
It is not unlike states like Illinois that require a company with a large facility to track the location of PBX extensions for 911 purposes. This has been a bit of a headache when people go to do VOIP in those settings. Imagine that on the Internet and there are definitely some issues to resolve.
But, without problems like that, from where would innovation come?
decreasing differentiation (Score:3, Interesting)
- Increasing cost for IP phones, where they were competing on cost;
- Mandating greater functionality for IP phones, in one of the few areas where traditional landlines had an edge
Thus for example a friend of mine with an IP phone at home has kept a minimal landline solely for the purpose of being able to dial 911.Ultimately, by reducing the differentiation of these services, the decision is less damaging to either IP Phone providers or the Telcos than it is to the consumer - who used to be able to make a choice, less $ or better 911, but in the future will not be able to.
Sorry Charlie! The whole market just got that much less free, and that much less interesting.
-renard
Re:Overseas? (Score:3, Interesting)
What? (Score:3, Interesting)
Consider that every telephone in the nation on the traditional network - even ones shut off for nonpayment! - must respond to 911. So, you're in a horror movie, out in the forest, being chased by a murderer, and the writer thinks it'd be cute to send you into a shack after a phone, only to have it be disconnected, so that your perfectly reasonable civilized response is useless.
In the real world, that doesn't happen. If the phone company shuts off your line, they must still respond to calls to the operator, to 911, and to repair (and they usually also respond to calls to the business office for obvious reasons.) This is a rational behavior and the law requires it as a safety measure.
I think it's quite the appropriate thing to require this of VoIP providers, just as they required it of cell phone providers. Save your battle cries and sabre-rattling for when they do bad things. Go yell at SCO or something.
Re:Overseas? (Score:1, Interesting)
If someone sets up a publically accessible SIP registrar on their DSL/cable connection at home for everyone to use, which could be a nexus point to various VoIP-to-PSTN gateways supplied by other companies are you seriously suggesting that they should provide 911 services?
regulation is a necessary good (Score:2, Interesting)
Companies make money by pushing the envelope. They take calculated gambles on what they produce. This is a good thing: nothing ventured, nothing gained -- especially when you are using and developing techniques and technologies that have never been seen before. We have invented the 'corporation' to allow people to do this sort of thing at less risk: you can gamble millions of dollars (if you can convince people you're worth the risk) and come out the other end more or less OK regardless.
But there are some things you shouldn't be allowed to gamble with. You shouldn't gamble with water quality (how much profit can we make if we have a 10^-4 risk of Hg contamination?) You shouldn't gamble with power line reliability. You should be allowed to gamble on software reliability -- except in life support or military applications. Go crazy with your new distributed quantum computing net, but don't put it in grandma's pacemaker or a GI's helicopter until you can satisfy certain politically defined standards. Who decides what you can and can't gamble on? Amazingly, the voters.
The voters, in their wisdom, decided to make 911 service -- and the E911 extension -- something that you couldn't dispense with. They figured that the social good of being able to track down and solve emergencies at the source was more important than a few months of lower profits for Vonage et al. Disagree if you wish, but to declare all regulation off limits is to ignore the fact that some regulation is a necessary good.
Re:not a big fan of regulation (Score:3, Interesting)
Per the Massachusetts General Laws:
MGL Chapter 166, Section 14A, Subsection E
Voice Over Internet Protocol? (Score:3, Interesting)
What if I am using my computer to talk to another person on their computer, and we don't connect to the POTS lines at all... are we using VOIP and therefore required to have 911 access?
Does it depend on whether we are paying a third party to facilitate our calls?
I RTFAed, but it doesn't explain what the rule covers.
Who ya gonna call? (Score:1, Interesting)
You'll be talking out of the other side of your mouth when you call 911 on a VoIP phone, and you get the sympathetic voice of a fast busy signal, instead of an operator telling you emergency services are on their way. But then, I guess you'd prefer to live back when fire and police services were private contracts from your insurance company, if you were lucky. All that and more can be yours, as your uninsured neighbor's housefire spreads to your roof, in your fantasy Libertaria.
Re:Vonage has 911 service already (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm a capitalist, and as such my instictive reaction is that the market should dictate whether or not providers support 911. If I want to save money by not getting 911 support for my phone I should be allowed to do that, right? Well my problem with that is that if I were in an emergency chances are I'll need to rely on someone else having 911 support, not just myself, and without regulation I couldn't. It is because of this unique societal benefit that I feel 911 must be regulated.
No ten-digit number?? (Score:5, Interesting)
See, this is the problem. It is absolutely stupid for there not to be an alternate unique 10-digit number for each public safety call center. It would be very useful for so many reasons:
Users of Voice over IP, as well as cellphones, could program the relevant emergency numbers into their speed-dial, so that pressing the "Emergency" or "Fire" button on their phones, or another designated speed-dial marked on the phone, would put them in contact with the proper locality's authorities.
More reasons:
- Your elderly parent lives two hours away. You're made aware that there's something wrong. Instead of calling your city's 911 and explaining that the problem isn't at your house but rather in such-and-such town, you have the number for her town's 911 by your phone in case of just such an emergency, getting help to her house faster.
- Your cellphone may be your primary phone. Instead of always having to call the CHP 911, you can call your local town 911 if you're at home. Also more likely to be faster.
- Obviously, it would make the job of the VOIP providers ten times easier--just maintain a database of these emergency centers, and map the "911" mnemonic to the one closest to the location on file for the user. And perhaps there could be an alternate number to call if you want to reach 911 for a different locale--for example, 415-240 is an exchange in San Francisco (Central), so if you were in SF with an IP phone registered in New York, dialing, say, *911 415-240 would lookup the most appropriate call center in San Francisco. Obviously, you would have to ask someone their phone number to do this, but it shouldn't be a huge problem--most vacationers likely have access to a "real" phone. That feature should just be there in case you need it, and if you're going to be somewhere without a land-line for a long time, you should update your location.
I think the benefits of doing this are enough that it should be done. How much effort could it possibly take to assign each one a real phone number?
Re:Vonage has 911 service already (Score:3, Interesting)
Vonage relies on their customers to provide the plumbing. Regulating them in the same way as a traditional phone company that owns the plumbing does not make sense.
So, again, regulating them for 911 service? Yes. Regulating them identically to the traditional phone companies? NO.
Re:Vonage has 911 service already (Score:3, Interesting)
He did say capitalist in the first part of his statement, but then he mentioned free market, and the two are not synonyms.
Chris
Groovy (Score:2, Interesting)
Keep in mind that this will probably have more of an effect on the 911 system than the VoIP system: Vonage's chief complaint (at least publicly) is that 911 systems nationwide don't provide fair access to connectivity since they're tools of the big POTS providers, requiring those VoIP services to buy 3rd-party '911 call center' access. Such access is insufficient, and to the extent that FCC regs force 911 services to widen and make fairer access for VoIP, I'm all for it.
Also, regarding location-based emergency service, there's no reason you couldn't have a system in which you specify your number's location via webpage (as Vonage offers) and have the VoIP provider provide that data to the 911 switchboard, though it'd still be up to you to keep it current. Alternatively, it could be handled like legacy cell service, where the subscriber's home address is used and some form of indication is provided that the address is mobile.
Point being, that it seems that at least Powell is on the side of making VoIP a first-class citizen, and that's definitely A Good Thing(tm).
ps: VoIP taxation (for legacy POTS-related revenue for stuff like 911, lifeline, rural access, etc) if done, should be done flat-rate for a legacy number, so that pure net VoIP-VoIP which doesn't cross the border between net and legacy POTS isn't subject. Also, something like this could permit cheap or free outbound-only NAT'd POTS service with an inbound voicemail component (or inbound extension subdial).
Re:Overseas? (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem is to have filed your location with 91 (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:This article is just wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, that can be a dangerous thing to do.
The ANI/ALI system in an E-911 center will bring up your phone number, name, and address on the screen if you call, and even show where you are on a map, complete with little icons for the nearest fire hydrants, little police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks driving around (I've seen it a few times--it's pretty neat). But it doesn't do all this magically--it gets all its records from the phone company. Anyone ever had a billing problem with the phone company?
There have been several incidents in my old County where the info pulled up was not correct--either it reflected the previous person to have that number, or a minor typographical error (Johnson Road instead of Johnson Street can be problematic when they're twelve miles apart).
This is why they'll always ask you for your address when you call--they're making sure. And don't just say, "Yeah, sure, just send me the damn ambulance!" when they ask/try to confirm--if the ambulance goes the wrong way, Grandma might not survive her heart attack (ask me how I know).
So getting back to the parent poster, if you're pressed for time, tell them your address first, then the problem if you have time. If you don't, they'll figure out you're in trouble anyway, and know for sure where to send the cops.
--Ribald