Slashdot Mirror
VoIP Providers Given 120 Days to Provide 911 Service
linuxwrangler writes "According to this SFGate article, federal regulators have given VoIP providers 120 days to provide 911 service to their customers. The vote came after testimony from people including a Florida woman who had her infant die after being unable to call 911 from her internet phone. VoIP providers are also required to notify their customers of the deadline and of the limitations of VoIP 911 service."
Wow...I'd hate to be head of that project...
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
is 912.
My cell phone works with 911 even if you cancel all other service to the phone. Does that mean broadband and Voip companies will have to do the same?
I always wondered why it was that my cell phone always has to have 911 access, yet Ma Bell can cut my service and I get no dial tone if I don't pay my bills.
Would to provide new handsets with basic Mobile/cell phone phone functionality to hitch hike on the current networks emergency dialing capabilities. .
It would be a short term soloution indeed , but then 120 days is a very short term
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
They're already in compliance. You should read the disclaimers though. Every other paragraph goes out of its way to say that this isn't really 911 service. I guess the problem is that it's tied to your voip box. I could pack it in my suitcase and take it to florida on vacation. if I plug it into my mother's cable modem line, my phone number will ring there. Unfortunately, if I dial 911, I get the 911 dispatch center near my home in the chicago area. You can't really fault them for doing it. Maybe they could do some sort of ip address geographic lookup. But I doubt it would be reliable.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Why should VoIP providers be required to provide 911?
You cannot be guaranteed the same level of reliability with VoIP. Public telephone service operators are held to strict regulations regarding PSTN service, ISPs are not.
Something could break with a person's cable or DSL service and I would have to call and file a trouble ticket. Then, maybe 5 days later, a truck will arrive at their house to fix it. The next internet worm could be released at any time, causing major congestion on the internet which hinders usage of VoIP.
The idea that VoIP providers must provide emergency services is bogus. If you want something for emergencies, then get a land line. The internet is not reliable enough to depend on for emergency communications like this.
Shouldn't it be that providers can say "Whoops, sorry, no 911 with our service", and that's it?
Why can't they?
I mean, if someone wants to pay less and go the cheap route, should they really expect the same amount of service?
The government should NOT be regulating this kind of stuff, IMHO.
...I moved into a place with no phone service (California, mid-1990s) the phone would work and you could call two numbers, IIRC--611 to set up phone service and 911 for emergencies. If you tried to dial anything else it wouldn't work. Am I remembering correctly? If so, is that still the case? Is that the case everywhere?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
When will legislators learn not to hurriedly pass new laws right after terrible things happen? We all know it's not a good idea.
What do the libertarians/EFF have to say about this?
It seems against libertarian principles to require anything of VOIP providers (other than that they not defraud people).
E.g. they didn't say it had 911 service. Nor did they say it would work in a blackout.
Yet it is hard to argue with (cue violins) dead babies.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Initially, when noticing this article, I immediately thought of Skype as potentially having issues under this legislation (due to its ability to 'Skype-out' to phone lines). The article would seem to point to it not being required to comply under the 'Instant messaging' software gotcha. If Skype were required to implement 911 support, its possible they could have problems distinguising between those who use the software for internet-based voice chat and internet telephony.
Business Voyeur
Could she not have run to the neighbor's house and borrowed a phone?
If they want to be a phone company, they have to follow phone company regulations in matters like this.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Before 911 that you posted a telephone number for each of the emergency services next to your phone. Phone books would have the numbers inside the front cover.
I'm sorry to hear about the infant dying. But shouldn't VOIP users if they are technically savvy to use VOIP also be responsible and be sure that they can dial (ie have phone number handy) an emergency service?
As another idea, why not have an old cell phone around that is plugged in. You do not need to have a cell plan to dial 911.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Dammit, then, I should be able to push "9-1-1" right now on my numeric keypad and somehow be connected! After all, I'm on the Intarweb, and the numbers are RIGHT THERE!
My baby could DIE!
Vonage, to pick an example, already supports 911 services. But you have to set it up to tell it where to call. Most people, including that stupid lady in the article, simply don't set up the 911 service. All Vonage will likely do is change it to where you must setup your 911 service before the system actually works.
But then I gotta wonder, how loosely do they define "VoIP" services? I mean, Skype is a VoIP service, technically. You can use it to connect to the PSTN and dial phone numbers if you pay for the priviledge, right? It's outgoing only though. But how in the heck would they handle this sort of thing? Configure the client with where you are? Would this law even apply?
These are the kind of problems I see with regulating this sort of thing too early.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Sure, I guess thats really important, if you dont want to TELL THEM WHERE YOU ARE WHEN YOU CALL.
This is like that russian pencil, Million dollar US space pen email I get all the time.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Looks like I have 120 days to gather as many names as possible of houses strictly running VOIP phones so I can rob them of all their property while they sit back and wait for the 911 service to be connected ;-).
Seriously, though, I must be ignorant on this subject. I had no idea you couldn't dial 911 from a VOIP telephone. To be honest, I never gave it much thought.
My lame blog.
This is a bad move, in my opinion. All this does is force people to provide "good enough" service in the next 120 days. If the issue is that VoIP calls to 911 are problematic, then attach a stigma to using it in the home. No amount of money saved is going to make me trust a system created in 4 months as opposed to one that's been refined for decades.
If it's not ready for the home, then it's not ready. VoIP should start with businesses. If you really want it in your house, I believe it should come with the understanding that 911 is either going to be suboptimal or just plain unreliable.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
When I subscribed I had to have Vonage configure my 911 service. It took some time, but it ended up working out. The key is this though...if my Broadband connection goes down for any reason, so does my 911 service. SO...I have a stand-by cdll phone just in case.
Frankly, I don't see what the big deal is here. At least with Vonage, the make sure you understand you need to configure 911. User responsibility...go figure.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
Yeah, right. We know who is really pushing for this--phone companies who want to put VOIP providers out of business or at leaast bleed them financially. If nothing else, it's a scare tactic. "Not yet, Joe Consumer. You want to keep your land line in case of an emergency!" While I agree that VOIP companies should disclose their 911 abilities and should make moves towards getting 911 working, 120 days is an unreasonably short amount of time, and seems designed for failure with companies who haven't even started yet. How about we give them a year so they can put something reliable together instead of each company scrambling to hack it together before they're fined?
Let's not forget, VoIP *is* going over the Internet...
(Caller dials 911)
Caller: Help! Emergency! My baby's not breathing!
Operator: OMG!
Caller: Send help right away!
Operator: A/S/L?
Cell phones did not support real 911 for quite a long time and people died then too. Just because we have a new technology (square peg) doen't mean we should try and make it fit within our exiting infrastructure (round hole). I would have preferred to see it required that providers EITHER make their service 911 aware OR put a warning label on bills, sign up forms and equipment that warns Joe Sixpack he may not be able to dial 911.
If that story is true it must be heart wrenching to know that if you had simply kept a list of emergency telephone numbers (real local numbers like everyone did pre-911) that things would have turned out differently.
Note to self: The 911 system is based on technology working correctly, have a backup system.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Yes, it is really useful to tell a recording where you are! If you RTFA:
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
You call 911 and get a busy tone...
Or you call 911 and get a recording that they're overwhelmed with calls at the time...
Or when you work at a 7-11 and a guy robs you at gunpoint and you call 911 and they say they're really busy and won't be there for 30 minutes... (happened to me a few years back)
My point??? I can see plenty of times the system has failed or people have died even when 911 service was available.
What if the customer had to register the MAC Address of their VOIP adapter (or router) with their provider and gave the address 911 should respond to. Lots of people use VoIP as a substitute for their regular phone line so their location does not change realative to this. When they make a 911 call, the VOIP provider would send this address to the dispatch center as the location of the caller.
This address would be changable either by calling the VoIP provider or can be changed online. The customer would be responsible for keeping the address up to date if their location changes.
If they make a 911 call and the router isn't at the location they have listed and they don't tell the operator their real location otherwise, they would have no one to blame but themselves. Their VoIP provider isn't psycic as to where they are.
You are dieing or being mugged, or robbed, or kidnapped and you just break away for a couple seconds.
You can't talk.
the 911 service works in such a way that just by dialing those 3 magic numbers the authorities get your location and will arrive shortly thereafter.
with your call center idea, you are dead and by the time someone finds you there are no leads...
with the 911 service at least some of the time the authorities can get there to save you.
Time for Google to unveil their new "Where Am I?" service.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
I can personally verify that 911 is useless if not dangerous. Because the response time can be in excess of 30 minutes after reporting a violent crime, it leaves a false sense of security.
I suggest everyone program the local police, fire, and ambulance number into their cell phones. I you have a home phone, print out the numbers and stick clear packing tape over it and on the base of the phone.
Do NOT use 911. It's more then a joke...it's fucking down right dangerous.
Life is not for the lazy.
I am currently in France, but I'm connecting to my italian provider in Italy. My IP is italian, but i'm 1100 Km far away from Italy.
What technology can route my call to the french "911"? Should we expect GPS into laptops soon ?
-- "If A equals success, then the formula is A=X+Y+Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut." - Einstein
I remember when the back and inside cover of every phone book had the number to the local police, fire, and hospital (back in the phone monopoly days)
911 is great for a visitor but if you live in a community, it is your duty to know when your trash is picked up, the status quo of the community, and appropriate telephone numbers for whatever services (septic pumps, fire department if you live somewhere where your burn trash, etc...).
Every family with small children know the name of their pediatrician, the location of the office, and the phone number of the office.
True Story:
2 guys unloading goods off a truck at a restaurant where I worked. 1 guy holds the unloading ramp waving to the driver to back up. The driver guns the gas, the truck is in reverse, the ramp hits the back door and the guy holding the ramp gets a finger cut off.
The kids who witness this freak out, I keep my cool. I pickup his finger (which was grey in color and kind of flat) and put it in ice, call 911 and monitor the time.
There is a fire house less than 2 miles away from us so I figure that it shouldn't take that long.
After 15 minutes, I call again.
27 minutes after the first call, they arrive.
A police dispatcher will tell you that calling their desk will result in a faster response time anyway.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
It's one of the oldest tricks in the book--all the landline dialtone providers have been looking for some way to steer people away from thess less expensive VOIP alternatives, so they're highlighting all these horror stories just to scare people away.
I have Vonage VOIP.
Vonage makes it abundantly clear that you must activate 911 Service by providing address information. You'd have to be an absolute idiot to miss this. It's prominently displayed in red at the top of your account dashboard when you log into the site. A glaring red insert is in the box with your phone adapter right on top. It's all over their website for new customers, and everywhere in their FAQs.
I activated my 911 service as soon as I signed up, 'cause it was made imminently clear to me that I needed to do so. By the time my adapter arrived, my 911 service was in place.
If you're too damn stupid to activat the service, I just see it as evolution in action. Hopefully you were too damn dumb to breed yet too.
When I switched to VoIP I thought the same thing: "even if 911 doesn't work, I'll just dial the number for the police station or fire station or whatever." So I contacted the local police station and asked what the # was for calling in an emergency. They said: "911" ... no matter how many agencies I asked about calling the emergency center or police station directly, they all said: "no, direct calling has been phased out... you have to call 911." Calling a police station directly means you are calling about something non-critical and will be put on hold or get a machine.
I don't know how widespread this problem is, but the "direct calling" idea is no longer an option in some locations. Sad, really.
So, Vonage connected her to a non-emergency number that is not answered 24/7. Not a good idea. I know that in some cities (such as Denver, where I live), there is no emergency number that is widely published. I can't look one up; 911 is the only number the police provide.
My final thought on today's events: Amidst all the emotionally heart-wrenching anecdotes about failed Vonage 911 calls, no one ever mentioned the failures of traditional carrier emergency response services. I'm forced to wonder what would have happened if the FCC had paraded the spouses and parents of those who died when 911 failed on traditional wireline and wireless networks? I guess that wouldn't be acceptable - that might scare consumers of traditional telecom services and antagonize the traditional communications power structure. Let's bully the new weak kids in town but not draw attention to current emergency response failures by those that are capable of fighting back.
Couldn't agree more. This order is just the stepping stone to full regulation of VOIP inlcuding lawful intercept (CALEA) in order to kill it on behalf of the BOCs.The problem is that if there's a power cut, all the mains-powered phones stop working. However, dumb phones are powered from the phone line, and remain operative. (I once spent some time in a holiday house with no electricity at all, except for the telephone.)
You probably don't want to train people to rely on unreliable devices like computers for emergencies --- you want to train them than when they need to call emergency services, get a real phone.
Not sure if anyone's pointed out that, even if you properly set up Vonage's 911 service, their terms of service clearly state that you WON'T be connected to the same 911 center as a landline or cell phone...
my emphasis...
"This? I can make a hat, I can make a brooch, I can make a pterodactyl..."
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
GPS is not an option indoors which limits it to less than 5% of all VoIP phone/device locations.
Telcos have alot of dark fibre in the States. Most people assume that's optical fibre...but it's actually moral fibre.
I have been using VoIP for over a year at home, and I enjoy the technology. I run it over my cable modem. Comparing how reliable my cable service is, vs how reliable my POTS line is; I knew that I needed to keep a minimum POTS line active, just in case.
The device that I use is called a Sipura 3000 analog adapter. It allows my cordless phone system to plug into ethernet for VoIP. Another nice feature is that I can plug my POTS line in to it as well.
I have programmed the device to route 411 and 911 calls made from my cordless phones on to the POTS line instead of the VoIP line. That gives me full, reliable 911 service without having to inform my guests that some phones are for dialing, and other phones are for 911. Every phone can reach 911.
Another nice feature of this system is that it also routes all calls to the POTS line in the event of 1) VoIP service outage or 2) general power outage.
There are also programmable features for routing specific calls to specific gateways based on charateristics that you define. Gateway 0 is for POTS, gateways 1-3 (there are more than 2, can't remember the upper limit) are for VoIP services.
If your VoIP provider allows BYOD, it is definitally worth checking out.
btw: the TX case in this mess is interesting. I was in Houston on business when it happened. The customer in question was interviewed on the news. The customer claimed that he had no knowledge that Vonage did not handle 911. Seeing all the warnings that Vonage give you, it would actually take some effort to ignore the warnings. No sympathy.
Is that I completely understood what you just said...
Best Slashdot Co