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VoIP Providers Worry as FCC Clams Up
phoneboy writes "By the end of next week, Voice over IP providers must advise all subscribers of any 911 service limitations and get "affirmative acknowledgment" that customers understand that VoIP 911 service is not the same as landline 911 by July 29. What happens if the customers don't affirm? The FCC isn't saying."
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VoIP providers don't know what's gonna happen. Lots of lawyers try to pretend they know. FCC sticks with "no comment." In the end, everyone does whatever they want.
Every VOIP provider should cut off customers that don't respond and then blame the FCC. Hopefully the FCC would get enough seriously negative feedback from consumers that they won't try this shit again.
As a Vonage customer.. I have received numerous notifications (ok, i'm lazy) to activate the E911. Just last week, I got what I perceive as threats from Vonage, claiming that if i DON'T activate my E911 service, they WILL discontinue my service immediately.
I understand their reason for pushing this, but the discontinuation is such a lazy way for them to just say "ok, so when the FCC checks us out, we don't have to worry about that guy because they won't know if he did/didn't sign up for E911".. problem solved, sadly..
This should be totally optional to the customer. If they don't want to set it up.. fine.. that's their problem, not OURS..
Vonage.. your prices are great.. your image as a company not giving into the FCC and protecting your customers.. horrible..
"The ones who dont do anything are always the ones who try to pull you down" -- Henry Rollins
It's really something where people have to be bullied into doing something that may save their own lives. And then people complain about it.
If everyone was a little less ineptm and a little less ready to blame everyone else we wouldn't need to do this sort of thing.
What news of other (european?) countries? how are THEY solving it. Perhaps the US should take a leaf out of their book.
In these days of cell phones and VoIP not everyone has a landline. I know that I don't.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
the 911 solution seems to be a hack. I was looking at getting Vonage but the thing that concerns me is that with calling 911 you have to give the person on the other end your address. What if there is a situation where you can dial but for some reason can't say anything i.e choking, home invasion etc?
Once they address this then I will probably look into it again.
I have to say that at the price for my Speakeasy VOIP and quality/features I receive from them, I wouldn't care if they told me that 911 doesn't work at all. I hope POTS isn't having 911 be their main selling point. There were days when you wrote emergency numbers by your phone, it's not that tough.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
I have to admit this is annoying, but it is the sort of annoying that may be necessary to potentially save lives of those "i'll do it later" but never actually do kind of people.
The companies just need to make it that if you haven't yet set up your E911, whenever you try making a call, before the call connects, it gives a voice prompt telling you that E911 is not yet set up, and without it you may have difficulty making emergency calls. After the voice message, your call connects normally.
Very much like a software approach to security updates and registrations, and while annoying, if following the instructions is the only way to get rid of the annoyance, you may be suprised at how many people suddenly take the effort.
At least people can't accuse the VOIP companies of not warning them.
Is there no VoIP app out there where you can dial peoples web addresses (converted to IP address) directly instead of through a central server?
Afterall, VoIP is just another internet application running on top of IP.
Or, alternatively, can't we have a distributed system like with Bittorrents, where you click on a torrent to join a network, then the occupants of that network can change over time...
The internet is fluid, it shouldn't be stopped! It helps the people to communicate.
If it is limited, the USA is going to fall way behind...
The US is already falling behind India in terms of software innovations as the US allows arbitrary uncompetitive software patenting.
I know this is a pain for most of you who use voice IP services, but this is actually a pretty reasonable rule. Everyone in America is taught from a very early age to dial "911" if you're in serious trouble. And the FCC has gone to great lengths to make sure that those calls always get connected. Payphones don't charge for them. Cell phones, even if they don't have service established, are supposed to put them through. And now, it's voice IP's time to make sure such calls work.
"You" may be smart enough to know that the call won't go through, or won't be able to access address information for emergency services. But what about the plumber who you (foolishly) left in your house, who has a heart attack and crawls to your phone ? Or your friend, who watches you pass out while eating a cheese doodle ? Is he going to know that you were too lazy to call and register your information ?
If these companies want to provide home telephone service (or something like it) then they should provide the same 911 emergency information that everyone else does. Because it saves lives.
StupidChildren...the reason jesus is crying
"I just cut my hand wide open, I need an ambulance!"
"Sir, I can't understand you, there's too much lag."
Traditional land lines are very reliable in America. There are more instances of power outages than phone outages. (when was the last time you got a busy signal for 911 or had to use your cell phone because your power AND phone were out of service?) It boggles my mind to think that the FCC wants people to trust computers/cable providers/routers to be as reliable. And please don't because VoIP is sold as a land-line equivalent, because I'm sure there are houses out there that only use cordless phones and hence they are in the same boat in a power outage.
I don't get it.
Don't know about anywhere else but here in Ontario, Canada, if you've got a cellphone you can use it to call 911. Doesn't matter if there's any kind of service on it otherwise, as long as it picks up a signal it will dial.
I don't think it lets them locate where you're calling from, though I could be wrong.
If I were really in an emergency, I would probably use whatever communication method is closest, even if it were a tin can with a string hanging out the end of it.
For real, I have a land line and a cell phone. I don't have a VoIP phone, but I've used them. If I were really in an emergency, I wouldn't hesitate to use any of the three and would only resort to one farther away if my first choice didn't work or if the emergency personnel on the other end specifically requested it. I probably wouldn't even stop to think about it.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
In the U.S., all cell phones (even ones without plans attached to them) must be able to dial 911.
In theory, someone can take an old cell phone, throw it in the glove compartment of their car, never have to pay a cent, and if they are in an area with coverage they can dial 911 from it if they get in an accident.
One of the points made is that there is sometimes no way to tell the location of a VOIP phone, which is a problem if you are unable to talk.
How about if the VOIP app. insisted that you record a 30 second emergency message (stating your location/name/whatever) when being installed and then watched what numbers you were dialling. If you ever dialled 911, and then if there was more than 20 seconds of dead airtime, began to play the message over and over.
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
Sometimes when I stroke myself to much i spoge on my head and have to get hector to pee on me.
I work for a company that works with FCC. Its totally horrible last few months. They even put a help desk up, that no one can get past. You can no longer call the people who actually DO things, instead you get miss I can't help you nor let you go through to the people who you used to talk to, cause we changed their numbers.
We told the FCC that we needed to test out the new system BEFORE They release it, they go, its perfect. Can you imagine what happened? SIMPLE, it NEVER worked. NEVER. When we interfaced, you guested it..... They came back said "ops, we made a mistake, wait another week for a fix.. then they said revert back to the old way"
so we did... ends up they didnt either. So the specs they release isn't right. so we had to spend ungodly man hours reverse engineering it.
What I think of FCC? Their actions speak for themselves.
> "I just cut my hand wide open, I need an ambulance!" ...
"Then how did you manage to dial 911?"
----- Concentrate on promoting more than demoting.
You might want to check out http://www.wigiwigi.com/ . Have just entered beta it seems and is under very active development.
I'm in the UK and this talk of enabling 911 services on a device seems a little stupid, why don't the phone companies do it for you right away? Why does the customer have to do it? Looking in this thread people mention they have to give an address? Whats the deal with that, they would need an address to get to you in an emergency. Why is this a big deal that every week on slashdot their is a discussion about it? I'm just a non american sitting here scratching my head with confusion and wondering what the hell you americans are playing at! Not trolling, I really want to know.
Jonathanjk.com
Is a new 911 system. Duh. Think about it ... the traditional phone monopolies have a hold of the 911 system by the cahones, and they like it that way. And they cannot be too happy about voip, especially stealing their business.
... so I made sure everyone in the family has cell phones and they know to use them to call 911.
I work for a local company that is both a telephone and data company (I work for the data side). We have a small test voip network. Basically, we threw together all the equipment needed to do voip. And I ported my home number over to it. Can I dial 911? Got me
If I remember correctly, 911 is a service we have to subscribe to, which is why customers are footed the bill, and it's a requirement. Why not just change the 911 system? Have someone create an open standard that anyone can link into without a problem. Hell make it based on IP and redundant and better than the current 911 system (not that I know how that works).
Lets turn this from the FCC ruling something that could be the ruling RBOCs' wet dream into making an exsisting system something better. I might just start by writing the FCC myself...
FLR
Thats nice and all but it didn't really explain anything.
Jonathanjk.com
As being with a VoIP in .au, we have been thinking about this issue and found a very simple one: Setup a chain of authority for the data.
.gov departments which have no clue about things. But for the rest, it's all there under your nose!
At the begin of the search there is a phone number being called from.
The phone number is owned by a certain telco, which terminates it at a certain PRI. This is just database stuff, it's known where the PRI terminates. 911 looks up the number in this database, and gets a refferral[sp] to the VoIP provider.
The VoIP provider knows what VoIP-phone has that number, and thus its IP address.
If the IP address is local (i.e. handled by DHCP server of the VoIP provider), the VoIP provider knows where the VoIP phone is. 911 knows the location of the phone.
If the IP address is a dialin number of the VoIP provider, the VoIP provider knows what the next phone number is to search for via its Caller ID. 911 knows a new phone number to search for.
If the IP address is a remote IP address, then the VoIP provider returns the IP address of the VoIP phone. 911 then starts searching at the owner of the returned address block.
And yes, there is such a distributed database already on the internet, it's called DNS. The only thing which needs to be done is added LOC fields to zones and IP addresses and an e164.arpa zone with referals to owners of number blocks and it's all resolved.
Of course, doing it by DNS doesn't help big companies which want to sell databases nor help US
bash$
To route a VOIP emergency call to the correct emergency callcentre surely all you'd need to do was mandate that in emergency calls that you do a traceroute back to the caller, then search a database of fixed routers of the entries (starting at the bottom) until you get one, and then route to the correct area? The router owner can make available a list of house addresses and the corresponding IP address connected to it for emergency use. So if you are on your laptop and need to call the emergency services from your local wifi enabled pub or cafe, you can, and they'll know that you've contacted them via that pub or cafe. Or next door's unsecured wifi connection that you accidentally connected to.
I'm completely for VoIP. I'd love to be able to call friends across the world for hardly anything, but I'm also not for providers who don't do their hardest to make sure that their customers (who they're trying to convince to drop their landline) are receiving the same emergency service as they would have had.
I'm betting that the FCC tries to make the commercial providers illegal or at least severely restricted, but that's just a gut reaction against them because of their recent antics. But aside from that, I think that the 911 thing is a Good Thing(TM).
Luke
----
Sure, you know everything on ChristianNerds.com (An Computer Encyclopedia for computer beginners), but your boss doesn't.
Yeah me too, even more so with VoiP, I mean just the thought of picking up my Skype headset to phone 911 because my computer just set on fire and is slowly burning the entire house down, then realising that *my computer is on fire*... that computer runs Skype! Or say the cooker sets on fire and I forgot to buy my skypeout credits last week... I ain't about to run upstairs to get my debit card to buy more credit just to SkypeOut to 999... Geez. I'll always keep my landline near by, either that more move to a house where there's a BT phone box right outside.
I think therefore I am... a Linux geek.
When we signed up for packet8 voip, we had to give them our address so that the could feed 911. Now I understand it's not the same as pots 911, but they already made the distiction clear.
Where? It wasn't listed on the main www.fcc.gov website on the 29th of June... when was it published.. anyone have a linkie?
"Then how did you manage to dial 911?"
"The same way you manage to enjoy yourself while being rude to the public -- I have two hands. Now send the damn ambulance."
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It already is up to me as a customer. I don't have a landline or VOIP, thus no 911. What would the goverment do, break down my door, and hold me at bay by gun point while they install a giant red telephone for direct 911 access?
Regardless of all the avenues government is trying to act without regard to consumer choices, via the "municipal" services route... the consumer still has a choice in telephony.
Yes, I can refuse 911 service. I do refuse 911 service. Not that I "care" if I had it or not, but I see no reason to pay $20 a month for a phone I would rarely if ever use, just for 911 service. The FCC can force 911 service all they want, but until they can forcibly enter my house (I'd like to see them try!), I won't have 911 service, because I don't have a phone and don't plan on getting one.
If my friend sees me impaled on a knife, he can drive me to the hospital himself. I live closer to my local hospital than the ambulance dispatch center.
I8-D
I just unpacked an ISDN router, and there was a prominent warning in the box that if I'm using an ISDN phone that 911 service can't be guaranteed in the face of a power failure.
I don't see why VoIP services should be required to do more than prominently display similar warnings.
I'll stick to my land-line in case of emergencies, thank you very much.
I'm curious--what would you do in the event that lightning struck your demarc outside our house and in the process frying all your landlines and catching your house on fire? How about if a tornado ripped up the telephone pole where your copper terminates? Or a burglar cuts your lines hoping to kill your security system?
Couldn't they just have you plug a phone line into the reciever? If I'm correct almost all phone companies are required to give 911 service even if the user is not currently a customer. I know that this service is required for all cell phones.
The FCC is simply stifely innovation in this area. That's what happens when most of your funding comes from the companies you are regulating. NO government agency should be allowed to make and threaten to enforce rules without cleary annunciating the consequences of breaking them. This tack on the FCC's part is on purpose. Their constituants do not want VoIP to take off. It will harm their business. This is a great way to keep investors out of the area, as they will not risk their dollars, not knowing how much they stand to lose with these nebulous FCC proclomations.
Thankfully, it will be difficult for the FCC to enforce any policing action against the existing major VoIP providers as they are not US companies and do not base any of their operation here in the states. The only way they can stop us from using these services is if they institute a massive China like web filtering complex to stop traffic from the US to places like Vonage. I sincerely hope that the public would take matters into their own hands at that point if our own government tried something like that.
So much for any hope of a good US based VoIP company.
You know, as a VoIP user, I really dont get what the fuss is all about.
.... and i can still use my cellphone's 911. ...and...if you make the calculation, my VoIP phone bill + some basic cellphone plan = much cheaper than my regular phone line with the long distance and other crap they always charge at the end of the month.
I've been using VoIP for about 4-5 months and thats the happiest change I've made in my life ever since they created the condom.
I save truckloads of money each month, I get to be able use my line from anywhere in the world..and tons of other things.
I know that if there's a power outage my phone wont work, I also know about the 911 thing.
Just get a cellphone, we almost all have one anyway. My VoIP always rings on my cellphone and my VoIP line at the same time (a nice feature) so even if there's no power, i still get my calls
VoIP is a new technology, we have to give some time to the providers to fix the few bumps it may have.
Anyway...
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
I don't think the telcos chose to have 911, rather the FCC forced them to support it. They also forced the cell phone companies. Why should it be any different for VoIP?
When providing services of a certain type there will be requirements that you need to adhere to.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I don't need your girly little 911 as long as my ammo holds out.
What makes me nervous about calling 911 from a cell phone is that where it's routed differs by state (or used to).
When I lived in Ohio (left in the mid 90's), all cell 911 calls were routed to the highway patrol who would determine your location and route to the proper authority. Your response time was based on the dispatcher's knowledge of the area you were in.
Contrast that with Colorado, where the County Sheriff for the location of the tower you connected to handles the call. The only time I've ever had to dial 911 was in the mountains, south western Jefferson County (sw of Denver) and was surprised as hell when I was connected to a Gilpin County dispatcher (One county north, 30 or so miles away). Unfortunately, she was just as confused as I was and it was almost 5 minutes to establish that she needed to transfer me to the right department. Now I know, if I every have to dial 911 the first words out of my mouth will be "I need XXX county".
Guess the lesson here is, find out exactly how emergency cell service works.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
I understand that this is not a trivial task, in that location is not easily determined. But neither was setting up 911 in the first place.
"If you are an idealist it doesn't matter what you do or what goes on around you, because it isn't real anyway."-R.P.W.
The FCC gave cell phone providers over 10 years to figure out 911 services. Now they want VoIP companies to do the same thing in 10 months? You would think that the FCC, of all government agencies, would understand the problems that VoIP has to overcome.
-Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
The switch which routes your call probably doesn't hold the address information as it's busy enough doing other things. Even if it did maintain a 'flag' to detect whether your originating call was kosher or not, you may have moved your VoIP box. Maybe you're at a friends or you have actually moved. These systems work globally where ever there's IP.
The FCC has allowed that it's the customer's responsibility to update and the VoIP company's responsibility to respond to that update quickly (near real-time). The FCC, however, has no authority over the customer; can't confiscate his VoIP equipement, can't summons him to court... can't even aide in an effort to identify he who has changed his VoIP address but not told his VoIP company. (not that any of that would be a useful or desirable function of the FCC
The FCC has drawn a line in the sand; All "phones" should work similarily. Now, they also cannot do anything about the fact that current NET infrastructure is not powered (that may change) and that if your power goes, so does your VoIP phone. Those of us who have subscribed to VoIP have, supposedly, agreed and understood that.
But a visitor to your home/location would probably understand the connection between the lights not working and the phone not working. Certainly a dead phone is a pretty hard&crunchy piece of physical evidence to try something else.
But a visitor is not likely to know that the police in Austin are now responding to an emergency call where you last lived and the police in Chicago have no idea that your child is choking to death at your current residence. So sorry you did not explain that lack of ambition on your part when you left your child in her care....
And the FCC has outlined rules which leave the VoIP company little choice; get all customers on board or else. Is that a reasonable choice? Well, the U.S. market will eventually decide. VoIP companies have 120 days. Will the people rise up before then? Given that many/most won't even become aware of the issues until they get the notification in the mail sometime into that 120-day window, I doubt it.
The FCC also has a trial-baloon floating the idea that VoIP equipement should identify your location without human intervention (domain and IP are of no help so that pretty much means your VoIP must provide GPS info). Certainly costly. Probably unreliable (unlike cell phones, when you're calling and GPS isn't quite making it, you can't easily walk outdoors to try to get a better path).
My take on it as a VoIP customer is that I'd prefer the cost savings and forego the 911 service. I'd be happy to paste a label to my phone advising any potential user that they should use an alternative. I also have a cell phone. I also have regular POTS service. Even if I did not, I believe I should be allowed to make that choice.
Though I work for a VoIP provider I do not speak for them.
You may read the FCC order here
>>>What happens if the customers don't affirm?
First, they'll probably receive a postcard.
Then they'll probably receive an automated voicemail warning that service might be interrupted unless they positively affirm.
Then the voip service gets temporarily suspended until the customer affirms.
I have VoIP, and I'm happy with it. I've gotten rid of my land lines as a needless expense. I might have gotten rid of it anyway, as it's simply more money than it's worth. Maybe I prefer email over voice mail. I do also have cell phones, which are very common.
I pay for the things that I choose to pay for, and bristle at being told that I have to buy things that I don't want and don't need. Don't you?
It's an individuals choice to determine their own needs, and perform their own cost vs. risk analysis. Do I need a land line 911 service when I have cell phones? Can I accept the risk that my VoIP won't work when the power goes out and I forgot to charge the cell phones? Do I have to have homeowners insurance on my house that's all paid off? Should I get the maximum auto insurance or is minimum coverage acceptable? These should be my decisions, and not the government's.
No one is legally obligated to have any phone service in their homes. No one is obligated to have one and only one communications link. The law is inadquate to handle the complexity of today's communications technology environment. The FCC is out of line (pun intened) on this one.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
Actually, every last cell phone currently sold in the US has GPS. The vast majority of them don't let the user (easily) access location data, though, and for good reason - they're not true always-on GPS devices.
The phones use Assisted GPS, which require communication with and resources of the nearest tower. Essentially, the way AGPS works is that when the phone wants to know its location (typically because E911 has requested it), it asks the tower for help. The tower - which has a real GPS with a good fix and ephemeris data - tells the phone which satellites to listen for, and asks the phone to reply to the tower with what it's hearing, timestamped with the phone's received time information. The tower then takes the set of pseudorandom streams that the phone has relayed and the tower computes a location solution.
It's a very clever way of (a) offloading most of the work to the tower, thus making it much cheaper to build GPS into all phones, and (b) making it possible for GPS fixes to be obtained in very minimal conditions - even inside buildings - because another receiver, one that does have a full view of the sky, and ephemeris data, is giving assistance.
My understanding is that the 911 service operators are not willing to give out their super secret 911 numbers. That is causing VoIP providers to play a "guessing" game with numbers they "think" are the correct 911 numbers. If the FCC mandated that all 911 dispatches must release their numbers then I can't see how providing 911 service would be an big deal for a VoIP provider. I am sure the local bells don't want to share this information either since they have a lock on 911 at the moment. And to make matters worse, 911 is a local service provided either by your city or county.
Gov't sez "You must convince a 3rd party to do something. If you do not succeed, you might be punished."
WTF?
Were the FCC not in the pocket of the big telecom carriers I wouldn't worry so much about it.
But this is yet another in a string of ploys by the incumbent wire carriers to kill an upstart technology. The problem is that the upstart technology is putting a serious dent into profit of the incumnbents.
There really aren't technical issues with E-911. Instead they're political. Fix those and that so called problem goes away.
In states where the incumbent Bell doesn't own the E-911 infrastructure it's been a piece of cake to offer E-911 to VoIP customers. Lets face facts, VoIP works by exploiting excess capacity on digital switches. Those digital switches belong to FCC regulated carriers like Paetec and Focal. The VoIP is just the last mile. So there should be no technical reason for E-911 not to work with VoIP.
But in states where the incumbent Bell owns the whole E-911 system they'll throw up every roadblock they can think of.
People survived for decades without any 911 service. They had emergency phone numbers taped to the phone. This is so overblown it's not funny. Attitudes like yours will reduce the adoption of cheaper phone service so that people who need emergency services might not have a phone at all.
We could save lives by banning skydiving, skiing, candbars, and real butter. Why stop there, let's insist on wrapping telephone poles in bubble wrap. Every year a few kids are kidnapped by predators they meet online, so let's ban computer use too.
People are adults. They can decide what risks they want to take. Personal liberty is worth something too.
The FCC has NOT drawn a line that says all phones must work alike. The last time I called 911 from my cell phone was after they implemented the tracking system that we all paid form. The 911 operator did not know my location, and I had to tell her.
Also, since Cingular bought AT&T, they have downgraded service to the transferred customers. Dropping calls, not ringing calls through, not delivering messages for hours. Disconnecting phones from the their network without any notice; requiring users to reboot their phone to reconnect.
Now, most the the Cingular problems are not directly related to 911, but certainly the FCC has not required Cingular's cell phones to work like a land line.
If there is no GPS or GSM/GPRS involved in the IP-phone (wich may be a softphone) then there are NO BLOODY WAY to localize it ! The call may go thru a VPN from L.A. to D.C. !
I think it is possible to make a cheap and simple reciver for GSM Station ID broadcast messages. It could be implemented as a USB-key and the phone/softphone would only work if this key was connected.
From what I understand (I just spoke to a Vonage customer service lady last night, to see if I want service or not) E911 is the service that they will be rolling out by the end of the year which makes it so you don't have to provide your address. What they have right now isn't the E911 (E for Enhanced) it's just non-enhanced 911.
This is exactly what a lot of woman's shelters do with the phones donated to them. They just let people keep the phones in case of absolute emergency.
That reminds me, I need to grab my old analog/CDMA Nokia and toss it in the car just in case. There is either analog or CDMA coverage throughout almost all of Michigan (where I live) but GSM (which I currently use via T-Mobile) doesn't extend too far off of highways in rural areas.
One other good use for your old cell phones is to give them to grandparents or whatnot. Just simply teach them how to plug it in, turn it on, dial 911, and hit send. Let them keep the phone in their car, then if there is an emergency of some sort they'll at least have a way of calling for help.
So much for safety...Ironically, when I called to set up E911 the woman on the other end said that she was part of a group that had just called ALL of the local dispatch #'s that Vonage uses for E911 service to verify them. Boy they did a bang up job.
So I work for the local Fire Department, so obviously, I know the back line # for the dispatch center, the one that 911 is supposed to point to, and I tried to give it to them but they refused and said they'd look into it, and this was like 2 weeks ago with no progress.
My feeling about Vonage is if you can get everything working and you don't want to transfer your # you're set. If not, prepare to have to do phone battle with people all over the world that really don't seem to care if you can dial 911 or not.
Ocean is land, covered with water.
It does NOT work optimal... and the call is routed based on the station ID...
"what would you do in the event that lightning struck your demarc outside our house and in the process frying all your landlines and catching your house on fire? How about if a tornado ripped up the telephone pole where your copper terminates? Or a burglar cuts your lines hoping to kill your security system?"
You know, I hate people that rattle off "what if" questions like you just did. What if you get killed by driving to work today? What if your computer monitor blows up? What if... what if... shut the fuck up.
Good God. It's like you're just trying to make yourself look like an asshat, and you're doing a good job of it, might I add.
If there is a tornado close enough to rip up your phone lines, STAY THE FUCK OFF THE PHONE. If your house is on fire, GET THE FUCK OUT. Are you stupid? Would you really stand around in your living room and call 911 while half of your house is on fire or it's tornado season and there is a F5 down the block?
You know, you should stop being curious if all you can come up with are stupid questions.
If I were really in an emergency, I wouldn't hesitate to use any of the three and would only resort to one farther away if my first choice didn't work
Exactly. My cell phone is almost always with me. If it's an emergency I'm going to use it because it's closest. If it doesn't work I'm going to try to find something else. If I'm so incoherent I can't communicate my location to emergency personnel I'm probably not going to have the presence of mind to decide which phone would be best to use.
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After over a year of leaving my 911 service unconfigured (I use a cellphone, and rely on my ability to say my location if E911 fails), Vonage finally started asking me about my 911 configs this month. In fact, last year I used their portal's form to configure it, but the configs didn't "save". I got into an email session over a couple of days with a service rep there, who offered to take my coordinates in the email and enter them manually. I didn't respond, to see what happens. Nothing happened. Even though there was then an actual person who knew my 911 service wasn't working, despite my attempt to do so. Of course it was "my fault", but a single followup email from them could have got my coordinates set up. And therefore maybe saved my life, or someone else's, when I dial 911 in an emergency. So they failed that test.
Last month, after the FCC pressure, Vonage started sending us bulk emails asking us to configure our 911 coordinates. I blew that off, too, waiting to see what happens. Finally this week I got a phone call, reminding me to config 911. Why the hell didn't it ask me to say my coordinates at the tone? Then call back, repeating them for confirmation a couple of times? Asking for a couple of repeat dictations, to be sure I said the same address twice, without "dictos" (or whatever we'll call "voice typos")? Then, if the FCC comes down on them, they can finally spend the money to transcribe the recordings, and enter the data. I wonder what I'll get after the deadline expires next week. I just hope I don't need to call 911 in that time. And I feel bad for the undoubtedly thousands of New Yorkers (and others elsewhere) who falsely believe that they can call "the real 911" with their Vonage phones, unconfigured unintentionally - and leaving them unprepared for emergencies which happen every week.
Why the hell doesn't the telephone/ethernet adapter "call" me every time it powercycles? They've got my number!
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make install -not war
Of course it's good that you'll be able to dial 911 with your VOIP phone in an emergency, but, what is the FCC going to try to regulate next? In my opinion, regulations are usually bad, and not good at best. It would have been better to let the VOIP subscriber DECIDE what he wanted to have available in case of an emergency. Why in the world would he want to pay more for 911 support when he already has a land line going straight to his house? He could even have a big sign over it saying "USE OTHER PHONE IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY". The VOIP phone doesn't need to be able to dial 911 because everyone has a phone line. Even if you cancel the normal phone's subscription, it still works for 911 (just like cell phones should still work for *67). I guess the real solution would be to connect the VOIP phone to the internet AND the phone line, and when the person dials 911, use the normal line, else use the internet for VOIP. Of course, it might need a battery or something for when the power goes out, but it's still better than REGULATING an entire business to be forced to do something really stupid when what I mentioned above would do the trick perfectly. In the long run, the more regulations mean a higher cost because it costs the company money to support 911 and obey all the other regulations I'm sure the FCC will invent. It's also bad for when someone like janet jackson shows a tit on a halftime show and people get sued tons of money for a freakin tit. Now that the FCC is getting the authority to regulate VOIP, I have a feeling it just going to be a downward spiral until VOIP costs $100 a month and nobody wants to use it. Did I mention that I'm 100% against the FCC?
Well, imho, the phone companies are a joke, which is why I don't want/need a phone. I've had a few people give me strange looks when I tell them I don't have a phone. It's about as unimaginable as someone without a TV. (I have a TV, rarely watch it, and when I do, it's CNN, History, TLC, Discovery, or SciFi.)
Someone said I could reach 911 on a disconnected line. Yeah, maybe, if I had a phone plugged in. But, unlike a phone subscriber, I don't pay that emergency "tax" subscribers get on their monthly bills (along with all the other ridiculous taxes). If it's a public service, why isn't there a flat tax for it regardless of subscribership?
As for how I would explain to an Arson investigator if my house burnt down because of no phone... In the future, could not having a phone could be a crime? I don't think the poster intended it that way, but think about it. That's a scary idea.
But, to answer the question, AFAIK, the advice is not to call 911 from your own house if it is on fire. Priority #1 is to get everyone in the building and yourself out. Thus, it doesn't matter if your home has 911, but if your neighbor does. Does that make me a bad neighbor? I suppose in a way. Then again, if it's that vital, why aren't 911 enabled phones readily available on every other street corner?
Ah, they used to be (payphones). Then came the cellphone, and everyone not able to pay the high cellphone charges watched as payphones became rarer. If 911 was so vital of a service, why did its public/free availability shrink merely due to increasing shareholder value. It's a scam, that's why. It was always about shareholder profits. This idea that 911 is a must have, but is only obtainable by subscribing to overpriced services. What's next, to get medical care at a hospital, I have to subscribe to the local newspaper? Fire trucks only for those who have memberships to the local golf club? Police only take stolen vehicle reports if you are an AAA member?
And, yet, somehow, I'm the bad guy for not buying into the idea by purchasing a service I don't need or want.
I8-D
The only thing VOIP companies should have an obligation to do is to take pro-active steps to inform their customers of the limitations of 911 service. The companies cannot control whether or not customers decide to respond that they have read and understand the limitations. If customers have their service disconnected if they don't respond, then I suggest that the companies refer the resulting complaints to the personal home phone number of Michael Powell.
I work for a telco.
Around 11% of our subscribers don't have 911 at all. Of those that are supposed to have E911, 15% don't.
It doesn't get published as the lead story in the newspaper, but I don't think that situation is all that uncommon. I would guess that 1 out of every 10 calls that come into the 911 operator lack E911 information such as the address. It's worse for cell phones.
People's expectation of 911 is a long ways from the reality.
I haven't read through all the comments so if I repeat someone else's point, forgive me.
I do see the importance, and I think VOIP should provide 911 service (no duh, right?). I do agree with this decision with the exception of one thing. You need to every customer's acknowledgement in a week? Isn't that a bit harsh if not impossible? That's like saying, "I'll let you keep your job, if you can teach everyone in china how to dial an international number into the US in a week." If the courts had just said that, "you have to provide 911" they could probably just turn everyone's E911 on, right?
Personally, I think this is just the big telephone companies' influence on the government as a way of trying to hamper/cut down VOIP customers.
Should we have 911 via e-mail then? What's the difference between VoIP and e-mail? (Oh, I know... you can access someone's VoIP phone from the traditional network. OK, so what.)
My other car is first.
Man! These Phishing schemes get wilder every day.
DELETE
I'm not that experienced with how the whole POTS system works, but it would be nice if all phone lines were active and could reach emergency numbers at all times. I have an old Bell Atlantic cell phone that's the size of a phone book. I can use it to call 611 and speak with customer service even though I don't have an account with them. I'd be willing to guess 911 works on it, but I'm not going to try that.
i dont understand what the big deal is. i have vonage, and 911 works just fine for me. it goes right to the local county 911 center. and they get my address. oh wait... i activated my 911 service though... maybe they should just not enable your phone until you activate e911?...
I believe KPhone lets you dial "sip:somehostname" or "sip:someIP". Unless I'm mistaken, so do most other standards-compliant VoIP softphones...
Luke-Jr
I stopped my local phone service long ago, but left a (now useless) phone hooked up. I've since tested, there is no 911 on that phone.
IS there some regulations that they must? I know cell phones must accept 911 calls, but for land lines? If so I'd like to know - I dislike the old phone service (which was more expensive than my cell phone for less service. About twice what most people pay) enough to fight this issue just to screw them. It isn't worth my time unless I'll win though.
Should we have 911 via e-mail then? What's the difference between VoIP and e-mail? (Oh, I know... you can access someone's VoIP phone from the traditional network. OK, so what.)
You need to look at where things are going, rather than where they are at:
Today VoIP is in many cases a secondary system, lying on top of an existing telephony system. Here there is not much of an issue, since 911 would still be available through you local line.
Fast forward 10 years and our traditional telephony infrastructure has probably disappeared. It is replaced by pure IP networks, with VoIP being the norm. Here you can choose from half a dozen VoIP providers. Now imagine that I am sitting at home and something happens that makes me need to contact my emergency service. If my VoIP provider does not provide me with a solution I am screwed. In an optimistic case I have a cell phone, but what do I do if I don't? Remember that VoIP in many case will be transparent to most people, since they will simply have an IP phone plugged into a network port, routed to whoever their provider is.
VoIP *will* replace telephony as we know it, and the job of the FCC is to recognise this and address issues before they cause a crises. What is defined as VoIP is another matter onto itself.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
You're talking reliability of features and I'm talking similariity in high level features. Like 911, always on... it was a generalization and for that I'll put myself in time-out for 10 minutes. But I think the intent of the FCC to have cell and VoIP customers equally safe and identified is clear.
The next time a VoIP customer tries to call a non-VoIP number, have the VoIP provider intercept the call with an annoying message saying "The FCC wants you to know that VoIP 911 services are not the same as land line 911 and may not work in an emergency. The FCC requires that we tell you and that you acknowledge that we have told you. To repeat this announcement, press 1, to acknowledge that you heard it and continue your call, press 2."
This meets the "affirmative acknowledgement" requirement.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
When all else fails...
Amateur Radio!
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
No one i know has a land line - after Fido started providing fixed rate local calling, pretty much everyone in Vancouver (BC, Canada) that I talk to ditched their local phones.
Telus (the local crap-ass telco monopoly) has the absolute worst service ever, and most people didn't need much motivation to get rid of their land lines.
Mind you, at least with celphones you can dial 911...
Ran into this not even 2 weeks ago - needed to dial 911 from my house, don't have a landline, only the VoIP vonage phone and ran into the '911 service is not available from this phone' message.
Had to call a friend and get THEM to call 911 for me...real useful.
Even my IT friends that are all gung-ho about VoIP service (to the point of setting up their own linux-based machines to provide their VoIP service) didn't know about.
Gekido's Lair
I am amazed that Mr Sakaria thinks it proper form that anyone should click a link just because it says "CLICK NOW TO STOP YOUR HOUSE FROM BURNING DOWN!!!!1!".
I am even more surprised (almost encouraged) to find out that only 60% of users would do it.
"I got a half gallon of Jack, and 2 dozen Ant Traps. I'm about to get wild." -me
So, what part of the operator not knowing my location is different than the issue with Vonage? Other than the fact that we had to pay for the claim that they would locate us, and never delivered?