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."

Comments

I'll tell you what happens..

[MoceanWorker]

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..

Re:I'll tell you what happens..

[Nos.]

And what if I'm using my VoIP phone in my basement... no GPS signal there. Or in a large building, no signal there. There is no reliable way at this time to give an accurate physical location automatically to a 911 call centre when you are using VoIP. Canada went through this same issue recently and the CRTC decided that VoIP providers had to inform customers of these limitations. In fact, most VoIP providers have had to setup call centers that will take the initial 911 call, and by hand, route the call to the appropriate 911 call centre since there is no reliable way to do it automatically.

Re:I'll tell you what happens..

[sharkey]

Obviously, if you use your VoIP as a mobile phone, which is, frankly, bizarre

Why is that bizarre? Personally, I find the idea that I should have to stop carrying my notebook PC with me after installing a software phone on it to be a bizarre idea. Seems like portability is the whole pointto me.

Give me a break

[Programmer_In_Traini]

You know, as a VoIP user, I really dont get what the fuss is all about.

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 .... 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.

VoIP is a new technology, we have to give some time to the providers to fix the few bumps it may have.

Anyway...

Re:Why don't I understand the big deal?

[jjon]

I'm also in the UK, but I've been following this a bit, so let me explain:

Some Americans are stupid(*). Some stupid Americans will dial 911 on their cellphone, and when asked where they are will respond "right here". This doesn't help the 911 dispatchers send the emergency crews to the right place - they have to explain to the guy at the other end that no, they don't magically know where they are, and please can you give me your address. This can delay sending the emergency crews by a few vital minutes. (From a landline saying "right here" does work, as the 911 operator will have the address onscreen.)

So the US has introduced Enhanced 911 (E911), which basically says that cellphone providers must be able to track their users location when they make a 911 call. This is usually done either by a GPS reciever in the handset or by fairly accurate positioning based on the cellphone signals (i.e. accuracy of a few meters, not just "this cell that covers a whole town").

Now they are noticing that VOIP has similar problems to cellphones, so they are trying to figure out how to make E911 work with VOIP - i.e. how to figure out where someone is when they call 911 on a VOIP phone.

The additional catch is that VOIP is less reliable than traditional telephony, so 911 calls may be lost. People should know this so they can make an informed decision.

IMHO someone calling 999 (our version of 911) on a cellphone and giving their location as "here" deserves a Darwin Award (awarded posthumously for people so stupid that they improve the gene pool by dying). It's not worth everyone spending extra on cellphones just to fix this. It is probably worth associating a "main" address with a VOIP phone, though.

(* Some Americans are really smart, too. I am not a troll).

Re:Why don't I understand the big deal?

[radish]

Unlike in the UK where on calling the emergency services you have to give them your address, in the US there is this thing called E911 where the address is given to the call center automatically (from phone company records). That obviously doesn't work with VoIP as they have no way of knowing where your handset is plugged in at any one time. Personally, having lived in the UK for 28 years and survived to tell the tail (despite having to call 999 a number of times) I don't see what the big deal is, but it does seem to be a big deal to a lot of people.

Assisted GPS is in every cell phone.

[dmd]

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.

Re:I would get voip but

[TheZax]

Once they address this then I will probably look into it again.

Then it is time to look into it again. Vonage is rolling out E911 which provides your address and callback number to the closest dispatch center, much like a regular phone.

If E911 is not available in your area yet, calling 911 on your Vonage phone will at least get forwarded to the closest 911 Operator to your home (or whatever you filled in on Vonage site).

So have a look, my experience with Vonage has been nothing but positive.