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VoIP 911 Emergency Service: Problems and Fixes
13.7BillionYears writes "Slate explores the technical hurdles VoIP faces in providing 911 emergency services and points to some technical, legislative and commercial workarounds that just might work. Some are the author's own ideas, some are already in the works. Until this little doozie gets solved, VoIP will have to suffer plenty of FUD of the credible variety and may never spark a real revolution. Of course you can always keep analog POTS (plain old telephone service) around like floppies--just for emergencies--but it'll cost you and tie you down in a number of ways."
Like it's real hard to just remember your address and tell them on the phone where you presentaly are located... If you can't speak, well, it's probably too late for you anyway - and if you're in a strange place, odds are you either 1) know where you are or 2) aren't in a location using VOIP. :)
"Of course you can always keep analog POTS (plain old telephone service) around like floppies--just for emergencies--but it'll cost you and tie you down in a number of ways." ..I'm not 100% sure if landlines work this way, I would assume so, but I know for cell phones, even a non-activated cell phone can still dial 911. So go ahead and switch to VOIP, even if you don't have a cell phone, keep an old one charged up.. if theres an emergency, you can call 911 on it.
Isn't it funny how everyone is trying to keep VoIP unregulated, but then can't get 911 services. It's a compromise either way.
http://www.twcdigitalphone.com/austin/faq_special
I save enough in LD charges with mu VoIP service to justify the cost of the service AND keep POTS for local, toll-free, and emergency calls, if necessary.
You could've hired me.
My Vonage line has 911 service. It takes them a few days from the time you order to process your physical address, locate the local emergency services that are relevant, and tie it all together into their 911 call center, but once it's set up they claim it all works fine.
Obviously it won't correctly know your location if you pick up your home VoIP box and take it to a hotel or a starbucks access point or something like that - but those sorts of challenges should really be solved by a next generation of 911 technology (which would be as simple as saying that every phone of every type must have a gps receiver, and must send the gps data encoded in some form when dailing 911 (I'm picturing you dial 911 and you hear some high pitched screeches right at first where the call center requests GPS and your phone answers, using analog-modem-like modulation).
11*43+456^2
... will void the need for a 911 Emergency Service.
Everything will be under control.</sarcasm>
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
No it won't, the local provider is required to provide 911 service on disconnected lines.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
...are power outages. When power goes down, the trickle in the land line means I still have a phone connection - not possible when power goes down and takes your computer, cable modem, etc. with it.
Of course, if I actually joined the 21st century and bought one of those new fangled doo dads called "cell phones" this problem would go away...
with the new norm of rolling blackouts and power supply infrastucture disabilities, how can we be so reliant on an emergency system meant for, uh, emergencies, like the kind that happen with typically powerless results? and for those who think their little ups will keep them in conversation, you're attempting to power the entirety of the line system from point to point. but it does allow a bit of wiggle room if a ton of these ups systems were added for that purpose. one office connects to the next, to the one across the street, and blammo, a new version of 6 degrees of seperation.
when i jumped to Vonage and cancelled my POTS service, Bellsouth left my line with a dial tone and a message that said the line could only be used for 911. problem solved at zero cost:-)
I have been playing with this VoIP stuff a lot lately. My wife has worked for our county 911 office for quite some time, so this is a big concern.
There are some ways around this... My Router (Sipura spa-3000) can route calls out to a POTS line if you dial 911. You just gotta have a pots line.. My provider (Qwest) will sell me a measured service line for 9 bucks per month. Incoming calls are free, outgoing calls cost 2 cents for first minute one cent for additional minutes. (They didn't advertize this anywhere, I had to ask)
I also hear that if you disconnect your phone line, it is still likely to remain attached to the phone company so that you can call and order service. If the phone company gets a 911 call on the disconnected line, they will still forward it to your 911 center, likely without any ANI/ALI E911 data.. (Try this at your own risk)
For me, this is a non-issue until the phone companies start offering DSL independent of phone service.
Keep a cell phone around with no service plan. They are required to dial out to 911 regardless. You can pick one up at a local thrift shop for around 5 dollars.
First, to guarantee 911 service, force ISPs and VOIP providers into providing at least six nine's of uptime. The chances of an emergency happening within the few brief moments of downtime spread here and there throughout a year are slim. This would be no worse than having a signal fade on a cell phone.
Second, mandate that ISPs switch to IPv6 and that each customer have an exclusive range of addresses for each location. That way, any call made with VOIP is instantly traceable.
Then we could be completely rid of POTS.
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
I wonder if it would be possible to somehow route the Fire & Rescue radio channels through voip, because that was a large deterrent in broadband over powerlines, because of the interference. The interference between the powerlines and the Fire/Police radios. I know that opens a good deal of security issues, but it could be a possible alternative, rather than to just shut it all down?
je suis parce que j'aime
Through the Vonage web interface you set your physical address so that when you call 911 they know where you are just like any normal POTS.
If you knew a bit about GPS (doesn't work inside, doesn't work well around skyscrapers, needs 30sec-2min to get a fix from cold-start, drains the batteries if always active) you'd know that it's simpler to have a system where 911 gets the address of the access point you're using.
So to me the switch would be to cell phones, which, in my experience is much more reliable than an internet connection. Not only that, but I have to manage one device to make a call on my cell phone. For VOIP I have to manage at least two.
BTW, how many of us actually have a phone that does not require external power?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I don't know anyone, apart from my Mum and my girlfriend's parents, who even *have* a landline any more. And the only reason my Mum has a landline is for dial-up Internet access (until wireless broadband kicks off in her area). Everyone uses mobile phones now. Landlines are a dead technology.
One huge problem is when the cable goes out. For whatever reason, whether the company is working on the cable, or something else. You can't call the cable company if VoIP is all you have.
Third, force power suppliers to provide six nines of uptime, or force all VOIP users to have battery/generator backup that can increase uptime to six nines.
Decode these
...you could just get a nationwide cellphone plan, and have the ability to have a phone anywhere. POTS by nature is not portable, and those VOIP providers that allow you to use it when away from home still are a hassle to use.
Granted, once mainstream cell phone plans in the US go down to truly reasonable terms (i.e no credit checks, no contracts, $30-40 for unlimited local), the only use for VOIP will be a POTS replacement.
This privacy freak is really pissed off that so many people take 911 locator service for VOIP and cell-phones so seriously. It is all just a red-herring to distract us from the fact that they are building location tracking into systems that don't need it.
The whole 911 "problem" could be solved in a very simple way - voluntarily. Just add a dohickey to the protocol so that when calling 911 (or any other number you want to send location info to) the phone sends a chunk of data as part of the call. It is up to the phone's owner to program the phone with whatever geographic location information they want transmitted in such cases. For the safety-freaks and soccer moms some phones would come with a GPS that would automagically fill in that chunk with the most recently recorded GPS coordinates. For the privacy-freaks other phones without GPS would require that the current street address be manually typed in, at which point you could easily LIE or just leave it blank if that's what you wanted. Whatever option you choose, the owner of the phone, not the FCC nor the FBI nor the DHS should have control over what is repoted when.
Do that, and all this infrastructure, overhead and complication just goes away, poof! But then so does the ability of the government to use the phone system as a mass-tracking device.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Maybe this isn't true everywhere, but whenever I've moved into a new place, there is a phone line already attached. You pick up, and it's not a dead line - a cheery voice will tell you how to order service. You can't make any calls, other than to their order line, or 911.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
Ha! "six nines", you are insane.
There is no way on earth that ISPs are going to be able to pull that off, LECs can't even get that.
If you want a line with "five nines", it's going to be a TDM or ATM circut, and it will cost you several hundred a month, at least. (not to mention, expensive hardware)
Consumer grade lines (DSL, 802.11 based wireless, or cable) are rarely even sold with any kind of "nines" rating, but many could get perhaps 3 to 4 "nines" if well maintained.
I know some ISPs that can't even get "one nine" on some lines, though they don't usually last very long.
As for IPv6, yeah right. That's a bigtime forklift, and isn't going to happen any time soon.
um, no , it won't cost you.
if there is a landline to your house, and a plug, you can pick that up and dial 911 on it, and it will connect, its a FCC regulation, I believe.
e to the pi i plus one equals zero
Adding battery backup to a VOIP phone is a relatively simple affair vis cell phones and cordless phones. Adding battery backup to a modem (cable or dsl) is also trivial. Don't forget that many people only have cordless phones -- which are already susceptible to power outages. This would be no different.
Your argument also seems to be oblivious to the fact that regular phone lines *do* get cut from accidents and whatnot. Having power temporarily go off in a neighbourhood is no different. The phone companies are not held responsible for that, but are required to restore services ASAP.
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
Nice to be talking about 911 on 9/11. Heh. Anyway.
Why not keep an old cellphone for 911 service? All cellphones can make 911 calls, wether or not they have any other cellular service. That might be better, since GPS enabled cellphoens can give exact locations.
In fact, one thing you could do is have a wi-fi enabled VOIP handset that uses the internet for regular calls, and cellular service for 911 calls.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I use Vonage, and I have 911 service], it's just ghettolized in that it's not "E-911", but if I dial 911, they will have my address and come out - it took less than a day for my information to be accepted and 911 activated on my account:
"We have completed your activation request for 911 Dialing. You may now dial 911 from your Vonage DigitalVoice(tm) line. PLEASE DO NOT TEST THE 911 DIALING SERVICE.
When you dial 911, Vonage DigitalVoice(tm) will route your call to the nearest Public Service Answering Point (PSAP) responsible for effecting emergency response services in your area, based on the following address:" (address follows)
Packet8 has real E-911 according to their FAQ:
"Great options for a small monthly fee
* Virtual Phone Numbers
* Enhanced 911
* Toll Free Services
* VideoPhone
* Virtual Office"
Sorry, but 911 wouldn't be enough to keep VoIP from becoming the voice service of the future, although as you can clearly see, it is already pretty standard with most large VoIP providers. What exactly is the problem here?
Surely the necessary information can be recovered from the internet end. The VoIP provider certainly knows your IP number, which will typically track you back to your ISP. They know what their NAT boxes are doing, and should be able to track you to a specific dial-up line or wireless access point. In almost all cases, this should correspond to a reasonably specific location.
Protocols could be put in place to allow automated recovery of this information. Privacy freaks could evade it pretty easily by going through a non-cooperating packet forwarder between their phone and the VoIP provider.
Takes a bit of doing, but not basically hard.
The cellular industry has grown by leaps and
bounds on a continuous ongoing basis, long before
E911 became available. I understand that the
considerations relative to the market are different
for VOIP, but clearly there is a precedent which
leads to the conclusion that E911 is not crucial
to the uptake of a new telephony delivery format.
It seems terribly perverse to call
it FUD on the one hand, and spread the FUD
with the other hand.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
The dinosaurs are still clutching like mad to the gold numbers (the ones that spell out words). And they continue the monopoly by keeping the localities separated, and the splitting the region codes. If I want to call next door, or a few miles away in the same city, I have numerous area codes to wade through (718, 646, 917 just in Queens, NY, and 212 and other codes across the line in Bronx/Manhattan). And though 917 area codes were once provided solely for pagers and cellular phones, this is no longer true, 917 area codes now include home numbers, but try telling this to a bank that refuses a 917 number as a cell number or pager number.
VOIP should make it possible to increase the number of digits to more than 7 for a local number. And because of the numbers (skype I believe is already in millions of users and can dial out to regular lines, vonage is in the hundreds of thousands and growing, my local isp provides his own voip, and so on), it should be possible for a team of skype and vonage, possibly with no one else, to begin the process of increasing a local number from 7 to 10 or 11 digits.
This can be done by the following: treat all 7 digit numbers as a top level number, where if 7 numbers are dialed (or 10/11 with area code), 3 or 4 zeroes are automatically added to the end; the number 212-123-4567 is automatically adjusted by skype/vonage to terminate at 212-123-4567-0000, and users can add additional lines to the base number, or their account, where additional numbers can become 212-123-4567-0010 for a second line, 212-123-4567-0329 for a fax line (spells "fax"), 212-123-4567-2355 for a cell phone (spells "cell"), etc. Users who don't want people to easily guess a fax number can choose a different random number for fax, there are 9,999 possibilities to choose from. Adding 4 digits makes spelling more words possible (a little tough to explain the hold on gold numbers, but diminishes control if you think about the added words that can be spelled).
This would obviously take many years to make work correctly (would break old pbx) but I can make the changes now on my fax machine, most old pbxs are being dropped in favor of voip (especially as the old pbx systems break), and would be limited to skype (which breaks rfcs right now anyway) and vonage (breaks rfcs?), but others can adopt more quickly because the newer equipment can have its firmware upgraded, it isn't hard coded in like old systems, and the new voip systems are directly connected to the internet making upgrades easy (vonage box upgraded itself when plugged in initially).
The time to add numbers is now. this can bring back area codes to some sanity (one area code for whole state would be nice, one code per county would be ok too, but one code for multi-county cities would be better than chopping up a single county into a number of area codes).
I'm sure there are hurdles that others will point out. But skype, with the skype to skype calling, makes it possible to add numbers. If it becomes popular (and I'm betting it would), then others (vonage could do it vonage-to-vonage, vonage-to-skype, skype-to-vonage) would jump in, lest they lose business to skype.
Adding 4 digits (or even 3) to the end of a number would cut dramatically the number of phone numbers needed. And I know small businesses would welcome consolidating fax, cell, pager, and extensions under a single number. They already do this with "hunting" on a single main number anyway. And this is being done more and more with fax numbers, where computerized phone systems make it possible to receive a fax coming in on any phone number, not just dedicated numbers like it used to be.
POTS companies would still have control over, and be able to charge a premium on, gold numbers. But a lot of numbers would be freed under the additional digits, including what are gold numbers, but aren't being charged as such because companies have held the numbers for longer than the gold number charging has been out. And as those gold numbers migrate to oth
E911 for VoIP is on the way. It will be able to be integrated into your existing VoIP service and some VoIP providers may even try to sell it to you as a value-add. The problem of moving to a different location should be diminished as the methods to update your address become more real-time.
I don't get it. OnStar is a popular private company that specializes in getting emergency serveices help to people if they've been in an accident on the road. Either 911 should be privatized as a for-pay service or else the government should require OnStar for every vehicle owner in the States.
The concept is the same for phone users who aren't in vehicels. The government IMO should not be forcing this on any operator. If having 911 is so important to people they will gravitate towards companies that provide it to them, and avoid those that don't offer it. "You must have 911" is like the ONLY thing the government does re. regulating telephone companies.
If you pay the E911 $3/mon fee. It will send
your address to the operator. On broadbandreports people have tried it and indicte it works properly. pay, play.
Hedley
Decoding Bell 103A (300 baud modem) is easier than DTMF.
And 103A has no negotiation either.
911 get in the way of an otherwise great service.
Remember, the phone system was not built for 911 service, 911 service was something that was added on, because it was feasible.
Also, in days of your, 911 operators DIDN'T know your address... you had to tell them.... the service was simply so you had an easy to remember number for emergency services.
So sure, let's come up with some good ways to provide 911 service over VoIP.. but let's not let waiting for that slow us down, either.
In many places, state and local governments have stolen the revenue from the 911 fees on your phone bills and spent them on other projects. Never leave a pot of money in the same room as a politician. It is going to take years, and a major expenditure of funds, before all of this stuff is installed and working. That's not even considering the dysfunctional local politics that have blocked any progress in some areas.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
http://www.speakeasy.net/residential/onelink/
I'm not sure why they say that in the FAQ. But some of the Scientific Atlanta VOIP Modems DO have a battery pack mounted to the side. It's enough to provide a few hours of calling.
Life is not for the lazy.
How can one test that the cell phone can actually
dial 911 without getting connected to a, well,
911 center? I'd hate to need 911 only to find
out I couldn't get through to anyone.
I dont have DSL.. not available here.. i do have cable..
so problem still exists..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Comment removed based on user account deletion
VoIP will have to suffer plenty of FUD of the credible variety
This has to be one of the stupider statments I have ever read. IF it's true, it's not FUD. Either it is a legitimate concern (which I think this is) or it is a load of higwash and is FUD. Legitimate issues can certainly bring up legitimate concerns, but that doesn't make them FUD.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
When I dial 911 on Vonage, I am not connected to the Phoenix 911 service but to a local police station's non emergency number. They do not know my location. They do not pick up this line when they are busy.
This is useless if you cannot speak (happened to me one night from a bad prescription) or if your kids do not know their address.
"VoIP will have to suffer plenty of FUD of the credible variety and may never spark a real revolution."
A cell phone i can take anywere i want , or a Landline or VOIP that is tied to one place? Hmmmm to be honest i dont think anything to do with land lines will ever get huge again. I believe in fact that there use will slowly deminish into an oblivion. As soon as I am able to get dsl without phone service or switch to cable when my contract runs out I will be killing my land line altogether.
I implemented a VoIP solution for a huge office. All calls are made via digital (PRI), and can fail back to analog (FXO ports on POTS lines).
I have one POTS with no service attached to a red phone in the kitchen / open area with a big 911 sticker on it. I told the on-site IT person (as well as the managers) that in case of emergency: to use the red phone. The nicest part about it is that this phone requires no electricity from the electrical company and will run even when the power is out.
Mind you, that this phone has no service. It still has dial-tone. You can call the phone company (Verizon) by dialing "0", you can call Verizon's repair by dialing "511", and you can obviously dial "911". There is no cost to dial these three numbers usually.
IPv4 allocations for hobbyists? join the ipalloc-l mailing-list! www.operations.net/mailman/listinfo/ipalloc-l
Why not add a GPS unit to VoIP phones and send GPS data with every emergency call?
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
We don't need know stinkin regulation! This comment brought to you while watching The Hunt for the Red October.
Who needs DSL? Cable is faster..
Scott
©20014 angrykeyboarder & Elmer Fudd. All Wights Wesewved
six nines of uptime
That's an average of 31-and-a-half seconds of down time per year. That quickly gets rather unreasonable when you factor in ordinary hardware failure, accidents, human error, intentional criminal acts, war, and natural events such as hurricanes, tornados, lightning, floods, quakes, fires, mudslides, and who knows what else.
Any one of those events causing a mere 1-hour outage once in a hundred and fourteen years would fail "6 nines" reliability. Hell, on a 100+ year time scale you even meteor events almost become a factor. Chuckle.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The only time I've ever had a problem with cells being full is at New Year when everyone phones everyone else just at the Bells. Other than that, I have *never* had a problem with placing a call from a mobile phone. Plenty problems with the 10-circuit local exchange in the small village where my house Up North is, though. I've never had a dropped call where I've had a good signal, and if I *do* get a dropped call I get a minute call time refunded.
Mobile phones aren't especially cheap here, but it depends on what you're using them for. You can usually pick a good tariff for your use pattern. I like the ones with an hour of free calls every evening, because that mostly suits me.
In the UK and Europe, we've had mobile phones for a lot longe than the US. Most of the serious customer service problems were ironed out 20 years ago when people were still using phones the size of a brick. We have year-long contracts, but most operators will let you change your tariff on a month-by-month basis.
I have just driven 240 miles through some of the remotest parts of Scotland. At times, my girlfriend and I were the only people in a 50-mile radius. At no point, even in the wildest, remotest, hardest-to-get-to places, where despite the heat of summer a mere thousand feet below, there are horizontal blizzards, places inaccessable to all but hardcore 4x4 drivers and those in elderly Citroens with knobbly tyres, I never had less than 3 bars of signal.
Landlines are dead. Let them go peacefully.