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FCC to Push VoIP 911 Requirements
maotx writes "Originaly declared a regulation free area, VoIP is going under a new look. With complaints against it, the FCC has decided to move forward with its original plan to require VoIP providers to provide 911 support. This brings up interesting questions on how they're going to know where in the world your VoIP enabled laptop is when you call 911."
Yeah they can. Both from tower information/ triangulation and GPS.
The previous has been a secret message to my comrades.
It will be a requirement soon (if not already) for all cell phones to be GPS-enabled for emergency purposes. The legislation was passed a long time ago. I just can't remember the final "all new phones must comply" date.
If you mod me down, I shall become less powerful than you could possibly imagine.
This looks like a decision passed to kowtow to the region bells who think they're unfairly harassed by providing 911 services.
With wifi, ssh tunnels and unspecified internal deployment of handsets in a corporation it's ridiculous to expect vonage et al to provide 911 services comparable to the regional bell.
I fully expect 911 calls to end up getting into a frenzy for an incident that is eventually located in bombay.
I just got Vonage, and it has pseudo 911. You activate it by entering your address.
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It's not real 911 because it connects to an intermediary service that then connects you to the real 911.
http://www.vonage.com/help_knowledgeBase_article.
Since the inception of VoIP, I have not had a problem with subscribers not being able to access the 911 emergency system. They are still able to call directly to their police or fire department. I was surprised to find, however, that the typical VoIP user doesn't understand that the phone (which looks like any other phone) is fundamentally different in the way it handles information and can't reach 911. This can lead (in my mind at least) to a lot of confused subscribers at a time of crisis
Regardless, the in the end, the call quality is low enough that the dispatcher probably won't understand what you are trying to say once 911 access is engineered.
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With what broadcast towers? VoIP is typically done with an ethernet cable.
It should also be noted that some carriers triangulate the possition from the towers, others use handset GPS.
Cable companies and DSL providers of VoIP services offer 911 location service. They can do this because they have a fixed cable going to a fixed installation. In other words, their wire runs from your house to their office so they know exactly where you are. But, with services like Vonage that don't actually own the cable or provide the last mile service, this is not an option. Vonage and the like have no way of reliably determining the VoIP caller's exact location.
I am quite sure that cable, DSL and regular phone companies will push very hard to require VoIP to support 911 location services because it will give them back the control over the consumer that is presently slipping away with VoIP.
The CRTC in Canada made 911 mandatory just recently. I wrote about this earlier. They basically say that for a roaming type service (I don't know of any VoIP that isn't), the provider does not have to connect you to the correct call center automatically. Instead, the caller should be able to identify his/her location and then the call can be transfered to the correct center. Not idea, but there is not a reliable way to no location based on IP, or even something like GPS. The other big thing that the CRTC said was that the service provider had to inform the customer clearly of these limits to 911 before the customer signed up. The CRTC news release is here
For those cases where they are in a hotel, and have their laptop with them using the hotel's WLAN, a great option might be for those people to use the hotel phone when calling 911. Likewise, if they're in a coffee shop, or a client's site, and they have an urgent need to call 911, they can use the coffee shop or their client's telephone to make the call.
For those cases where they're running VoIP over, say, a cellphone link, perhaps the best option might be to unplug the cellphone and then call 911 from that. I'm not sure how effective VoIP over GRPS/UMTS/cdma2000 would be anyway, but I'm pretty sure the 911 service built into the phone would work better. And remember folks - for GSM and UMTS, if you're in some obscure part of the world and don't know the local number (911 isn't universal), you can always dial "112." It's standard on all GSM phones. You can use the local emergency number too, it's just 112 works everywhere, unlike 911 which is largely a North American thing.
Am I missing something here? I'm pretty sure I've covered all the bases. Is there some pressing need for a GPS system in every laptop?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Just so everyone knows, 911 can work on VoIP. My provider, Speakeasy, requires in their terms of service that the adapter be used at the location to which it is sent, the address on the agreement, so that 911 services can work. One of the first things I did was to test it - I called the cops first and they said it was OK; I called 911 and the same guy answered and read back my name and address from the screen.
IPv6 would allow you to deduce the geographical location, as the IP address is a function of the logical location, which can then be used to infer the most probable geographical location. However, IPv4 has nothing that allows you to infer location by address. This may actually be the driving force for IPv6, given that none of the other reasons (privacy, addressability, etc) have ever worked with people.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Cell phone companies made the same complaints. The found a solution and implemented it.
I don't understand the argument about calling 911 from you laptop if it is from your primary location that should be on record. If it is some hot spot at a coffee shop I am sure the guy (or gal) next to you has a cell phone.
There needs to be improvements on tracking IP locations. If the IP is located in Seattle it gets routed to the Seattle 911 center. If you are overseas it gets routed to the local emergency contact.
If you are paranoid and spoofing your IP I am sure you won't call 911 anyways, because then the 'government' can find you and conduct those 'experiments'.
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
If they maintained a list of what area each IP range is in it wouldn't be too hard. They would simply have the computer look it up and direct your call to the right spot. The only problem is that they might be going through an international proxy in which case it would be harder to detect.
In this case couldn't they make a slight modification to the standard to have something that sends the IP of the person calling when the conversation starts. I wouldn't think that it would be that hard to make it backwards compatable so that old software still works but have all new software with the new standard.
Anther thing that could be done is to have localised numbers to call for various countries.
911 frequently acts not just as a dispatch center, but a central command post. In the event of a mass casualty they act to balance priorities and resources, alert various goverment and charitable aid services, coordinate with the various hospitals...
-1 Misses The Point.Even with such routing, the 911 center *still* doesn't know your location.
I've spent the past few days working in the dispatch center of an small county sheriff's office, installing some new gear.
Today, someone brought in chili, which was excellent. Someone else ordered a sack of hamburgers from the joint down the road (which were delivered, and were extraordinarily tasty). People were generally enjoying their servitude in that small, locked-down room.
On top of the dispatch console was some eccentric 911 industry trade rag. The cover story was about VOIP, and how it currently relates to 911 service as we know it.
Therefore, they're aware of it, and the possible problems it might have.
The 911 phone nearly never rings. And, at least today, it only rang once for an emergency. The rest of the calls (a half dozen, or so) were all from MCI, who were running tests on a new-ish overlay area code.
Every now and then, the radio would make some noise that the dispatcher would respond to.
The dispatchers spent the rest of their day waiting for the phone to ring and shooting the shit with eachother.
So, just to reassure anyone who's wary:
Go ahead and test your 911 service. Just make sure that you've informed them beforehand, and don't waste their time with superflous verbiage.
And if, for some reason, it doesn't work: Call them back, and explain that the test failed. If you think you can fix the problem, tell them that you might like to attempt another test later. Thank them, and hang up.
Believe me: Those are real people on the other end of the line. They're happy to invest a few minutes of their time, if that means a slim possibly saving someone's life.
They want this stuff to work correctly at least as much as you do.
Kid-proof tablet..
This topic has been discussed at great lengths on the Vonage Voip Forum for weeks: http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic3843.html