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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."
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
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
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.