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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."
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
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)
what about kids who don't know the address plus lots of other imaginable scenarios?
plus auto location has other uses. with a local taxi company it asks you to press a button if you want to go straight away and automagically knows your location. it then gives a single ring to your phone when the taxi has reached your street.
But if you dont have 'service', how will they tie your line back to a location since you have no account data?
Sure you can call, but if your unable to speak coherently, they may not find you in time..
Just a thought.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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.
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?
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
What's even more interesting is that under the battle cry of "Safety!" nearly every slashdotter in this conversation takes the COMPULSORY ability to physically locate your phone as a necessity.
Thanks, but I'll pass. I don't want anyone tracking my physical location by ANY means unless I specifically grant them permission to do so. Period. As far as I'm concerned a compulsory system is a violation of the spirit of the 4th Amendment, if not the actual letter (and don't give me any bullshit about how I can just never use a cell phone if I'm so concerned; freezing people concerned with privacy out of the 21st century is the argument of an idiot).
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
"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."
What's funny is that you can't email 112 (or 911 or 999 or whatever..)
With all this fuss about being able to call 112 from internet devices, they might at least have considered the much more reliable alternative which is just sitting there waiting to be used...
In fact, given your area code and prefix (first three digits of your phone number) it is possible for you to determine the city and state, and obtain the 11-character switch identifier (sometimes called a CLLI code) of the MDF (basically a computer set up as a telephone switch) where your call is being carried from, and possibly even the address of the building where the MDF is located.
For example, George W. Bush's telephone number, 202-456-1414 is handled by the switch ID WASHDCMTDS, which also handles 30 other prefixes besides 456, is located at 2055 L ST NW in Washington, DC. (One use for the CLLI code is to determine if you're close enough in distance to your MDF to get DSL service; another is to determine how much you're charged, based on mileage, for toll calls between your MDF and the destination called party MDF). Translate the CLLI plus the circuit ID and you can have the address of the line itself (the street address of the phone) as a non-changeable ID.
If it would be necessary to return a call from 911, that identifier of CLLI+Circuit ID needs to be translated into some sort of dialable number that only 911 or the local telco can call, perhaps a local number starting with 0 and a 6-digit transfer id corresponding to the MDF circuit ID or something. Perhaps a special area code so that it can be identified to a specific local dial-tone carrier if necessary.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.