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FCC: VoIP Providers Must Provide 911 Services
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.
Isn't this going to just push VoIP companies overseas where there won't be as tight regulation? It doesn't matter to the end user in the long run where the physical servers are located afterall.
So, since servers can be anywhere in the world for VoIP, it's going to be like calling 911 from your cell phone-- no address unless you give them one, no identity data until you give them some. Great.
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I'm using Vonage for VoIP phone service, and they already allow Dialing 911.
Are there other VoIP service providers that don't?
I don't see what the problem is... Would you rather sign up for your new VoIP provider, then find out when you're being robbed or whatever that the police can't find where you are, or worse, not be able to reach them through 911?
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
i'm not a big fan of regulation, but requiring access to emergency services seems like a pretty reasonable request. the tone of this story seems to indicate that the government mandating that people are able to call for emergency service is somehow a bad thing. it's in the "your rights online" section, but i don't see where my rights are being trampled.
I have a serious question though: has anything ever NOT been ruined by standardization/regulation?
"Planes, Trains, and Automobiles"?
What?
I take offense at this article that things are being regulated that are "better off being left alone". I'm sorry, but requiring 911 features is not an excessive regulation. So users of the VoIP services are going to have to pay more - big deal. Having 911 access is very important and often means the difference between life and death, or extinguished fire versus hundreds of thousands of dollars lost. Since the VoIP services aren't capable of being altruistic and offering a very much needed service, the government needs to step in and enforce these regulations. This is what the government is supposed to do, and is certainly not "government overstepping its bounds"!
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Vonage added this a while back, more info here and oddly enough, my bill went down after they implemented it.
As much as I believe that most politicians are horse thieves and some things should be less regulated (radio frequencies for public use, for example), I think I'd be pissed if I got VoIP home phone service and wasn't able to call 911 in an emergency.
C
Are YOU that out of touch that you think you need to get on your PC to make a VOIP call? VOIP phones that work just like normal phones (from the enduser view) have been in use for several years now.
I'm all for this. Sure, it'll cost more and that sucks. On the other hand, however, I feel that this was one of the larger hurdles stopping the wider adoption of VoIP. By forcing compliance through regulation you ensure that those providers who do provide the (rather important) 911 support will be able to compete price wise with those who would otherwise choose not to.
Despite everyone here seeming to think that VoIP should be totally unregulated, 911 support is IMHO a very Good Thing.
People expect - and reasonably so - that they can pick up any phone in the country, dial 911, and get an emergency operator.
And how long is it going to be before people start installing VoIP payphones, if they haven't already? What about pre-wired apartment complexes offering cheap phone service?
Use of VoIP isn't limited to geeks with a dedicated and separate VoIP setup anymore.
VOIP dosn't mean computer...
Rogers cable here in canada are offering a regular phone that runs over VOIP on their cable system. Soon here in canada we won't have to depend on the telco for land line telephone.
God, root, what is the difference?
your location? What if you go though a proxy? Will it be a felony if the proxy reports it's location to 911, and not your actual location?
Fsking? What the fuck is this word?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Who needs standards when one can take a good idea and change it just a little so that everyone has to buy your version of it?
Um...this is 911 we're talking about here. I pay 25 cents on my phone bill for 911 service. God forbid, I ever have to use 911 - but I'm thankful it is there. Good for the FCC.
So the guy who wrote this article seems to think that regulating VoIP is a bad thing. I would agree with him to a degree, but having an emergency number is critical if you ever expect VoIP to replace normal land line phones. Personally, I would not want to rely completely on VoIP if it didn't have 911. What if a family member had a heart attack or something, should people die because they don't want the FCC regulating their phone systems? I think not.
Not all VoiP services are going to require you to use a PC. There is no reason why you could not have a typical looking phone connected to an internet access point (ethernet jack in the wall).
My understanding is that such phone sets are starting to come onto the market. And when your bleeding, your not likely to look at the wires attached to the phone when you call for help.
Calling 911 is one of those things that should just simply work. There is nothing unreasonable about this.
END COMMUNICATION
I am being serious here mod me down if neccesary, BUT WHAT IN GODS NAME is the use of this.
Hold on Im getting mugged/raped/murdered OH but first let me log on to my computer to dial 911
WTF ?
VoIP is more-or-less a regular telephone, with the service part coming over your Internet connection, as opposed to your old copper wire phone lines.
The phones plug into their router, but otherwise acts like any other telephone does. You don't actually need a computer to use the phone, all you need is a live Internet connection.
You're not thinking. Voice over IP is the future. In a couple of years your cell phone might be just a node on wireless internet rather than on a cell-tower based system. Wouldn't it be nice to call around the world, effectively for free, from your VOIP gadget? Now, wouldn't you want to call 911 when you're in trouble? Any cell phone sold today must connect to 911, regardless of whether it's currently subscribed. This needs to happen to any new communications systems, for all our safety. They're our airwaves, and our taxpayer dollars, and they're putting them to good use.
Think less like "headphones and microphone at a pc" and more like "normal-looking phone on a desk".
If and when these become commonplace in the home, you're going to expect it to work in a similar fashion to how your current phone works. Particularly, when you dial 911, you'd like the call routed to a local, nearby 911 service dispatcher, so they can get help to you quickly.
Most customers will prefer providers that actually offer 911 features in the first place. It's a value proposition and people usually take their family's security pretty seriously.
I think it should be left alone, people can make their own decisions. If they choose a VoIP provider without 911 then it's their problem (or perhaps they use it as a second line and have 911 on their POTS).
You people are bitching about 911 service?! Do you complain when that *big government* fire department shows up with their *oppressive* hoses to save your shit when it's on fire?
:muttering under breath:
Just go move to your shack in Montana and let the rest of us have a functioning community.
(damn code filter!)
"My house has never caught fire. Why should I help pay for the fire department?"
VOIP is just another technology for voice communication like two cans and a string, two way radio and POTS.
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...
God, root, what is the difference?
You can't tell the difference between a VOIP phone and a non-VOIP phone. What if there's an emergency at someone's house and they use a VOIP that didn't have a 911 number? The person in the emergency situation may not know this and try dialing 911. They end up getting who-knows-what when they are expecting help.
The stressful nature of emergencies makes it hard to think and people have it drilled into them to dial 911 in an emergency. If 911 doesn't work, the situation could get much worse.
Just imagine dialing 911 because someone's bleeding out on the floor and getting an advertisement asking you if you'd like to buy this number.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
I think what they are probably going to want for this, is something that will be mandatory and automatic. In other words, you will have it whether you really want it or not. And it will have to detect your location and update the info to the PSAP. Vonage doesn't do either of these today and I think it will be a bit spendy to do it. I know I have talked to people about the concept of having some sort of GPS device in a phone that could auto-update the location when it network connects. The problem is that an IP phone and easily move and I can take my phone a go to the neighbors or take it to a hotel that has high-speed Internet in another state and use it.
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?
If a VoIP provider doesn't have to offer 911 and it doesn't offer it then I hope it is immune from lawsuits regarding 911. People will also hopefully keep some other means of calling 911 then. However, if a VoIP provider offers 911 people might use that as their only means of calling for help in an emergency and if it doesn't work someone may die, there may be huge lawsuits, etc. I'm sure this will happen soon enough.
- 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
Many people don't think about them, or think about needing them, until an actual emergency strikes. Then it's too late. It's not a matter of if it is important to consumers, but rather if it is important to society. If we left all safety related decisions up to "the consumers" we'd be in a world of trouble. The majority isn't always right, and our system was built to acknowledge that.
A true majority-rule democracy would do just that. Everyone would have a direct vote on anything important and whatever the public said, would go. That's not how it works. We are a federal republic that is very democratic. People have a strong say in the government, and direct vote on many things, but their word is not final and they don't get to control everything directly.
Another poster alluded to this, but do you also think individuals should be able to subscribe for police and fire protection? If you are being held hostage, the police look up your details in their database, see that you aren't a subscriber, and refuse to help out? Your house is burning down and you and your family are trapped inside, but the fire department drives past your house because you didn't sign up for service?
I'm all for less government control and red tape, but emergency services is one of those areas which I don't mind having it mandated.
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there were those little modem viruses that would continually dial 911?
How long till we see a worm that floods 911 using VoIP from all infected hosts?
I'm confused. Why is it that requiring a network to carry emergency services equates in the average slashdotter's mind to unwanted regulation? They're not taxing, they're not restricting, and frankly, I think the extra tenth of a cent per month each person has to shell out is responsible, when you're covering for things like fire, burglary and murder.
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.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
What would happen when your broadband ISP cuts you off because you have exceeded their daily/weekly/monthly download limits?
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.
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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.
Well, when you move your phone from one location to another, your IP Address may change. If your IP Address changes, and you want to use your phone, it should be programmed that when you pick up your receiver, it will AUTOMATICALLY call the Voice Mail box to allow you to update the 911 Location information. This can be done via a Voice Mail Update or Web Page.
Now here is the simple thing. When 911 call is detected, it will call 911 via the Voice Mail interface, put the caller on hold while the Voice Mail will reply to the 911 Operator with the address information OR if it the information is available via web page, the Operator's Caller ID interface would interlink with the LDAP server where the client updated the information and would query this data.
Once the operator is satisfied with address location, operator presses 1 to talk to caller and poof most info is already there.
Nothing too hard to do... Just a little upgrade for the operators to get down with the info.
The key is that if the IP Address changes again, the client must reprogram the 911 Caller info before making any calls.
*Headline News* censorship shuts down the Internet! More at 6PM!
> 911 call centers cannot be reached by mapping to any 10-digit number. There is no 10-digit number...
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?
I think the initial notion was that mobile phones are used most often in cars (and they were) and for auto issues where the CHP has direct jurisdiction.
They will route you to the right people, but when you're dealing with an emergency, minutes can be critical.
I learned this joy calling in a fire in a adrenalin-fueled rush ("Marge, what's the number for 911?"). "You're WHERE? Concord? Massachusetts? Why are you not in $MyTown? There's a concord here? Well anyway. !FIRE!"
Fortunately, a fire in the East Bay is also called in by 5000 home owners*.
If VOIP wants to be in the phone game, they need 911. Welcome to the 80s. And trust me, if you or a loved on slashes half his/her arm off, you don't wanna be trying to find a phone book and the firedept's number. ("I know you're bleeding, just tell me where you left the white pages").
MrChuck
* the fire was blown through eucalyptus into a cemetary (really). They found thousands of bodies afterwards ;).
One reason people may be opposed to it is that I would guess few people at this point use VOIP as their only phone service. For example, I currently have a packet8 account that I use for long distance calls, but I also have a cell. If I'm already paying for GPS on my cell so people can reach me, why should I pay twice so I can call from my VOIP phone? At this stage people who sign up for VOIP are mostly early adopter techies who are aware of the 911 issue.
The other thing that makes it more difficult is that VOIP numbers, unlike POTS numbers, can use any area code/exchange. My VOIP exchange is for a town half an hour away from me, and if I wanted I could have an area code on the other side of the country. This means that getting 911 to work will be a significant expense for VOIP companies.
The fact that people have signed up for VOIP without it suggests that at least some people don't see a need for it and thus don't want to pay - either they have other phones or they can put a little note next to their VOIP with the fire department's number on it.
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As someone whose primary 'landline' service is VoIP (via Vonage), and having had issues with 911 performance in the past, I'm very pleased that the FCC is taking steps to improve 911 service.
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).
I have successfully dialed 911 from my Vonage phone. Granted, it wasn't a life-threatening emergency, but it seemed to go smoothly enough.
More costs due to Geroge Bush's big "terrorism" propaganda ploy.
As a European its funny to see how American's totally believe the rubbish that they are all in imminent danger of a terrorist attack after having one incident almost 3 years ago.
The amount of deaths due to this incident were totally insignificant compared to say American gun-deaths that have occured since, yet while gun laws remain unchanged, every area of American has undergone change to take into account a threat which has so far actually affected 0.000018% of Americans.