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..

[onion2k]

No. It really should not be up to the customer, simply because if there's an emergency you might have someone else trying to use your phone. If you slip and impale yourself in the neck on a kitchen knife a friend of yours might try to call help on your phone.. because, quite rightly, everyone expects every single phone everywhere should be able to call 911 at any time.

Re:I'll tell you what happens..

[kesuki]

It's more than just 'normal caller id' ever called a pizza place? if you've enver ordered from them, they ask you your address... they have caller id on the computers they use to take the orders..

911 operation centers have a customer address database, provided to them by the telcos, governed by FCC rules. and 911 center calls are treated differently than normal calls too, they get the highest routing priority (meaning if you've been chatting on a circuit for hours on end*, and the circuits are 'loaded' and someone tries to call 911, your call will get dropped) In addition, if you've opted to have your caller id blocked completely (not even a number shows up) your number will Still Show up for 911 operations.

This is all because of FCC regs. And yeah, DSL uses a circuit too, but telcos went whole hog increasing the number of circuits available because of dialup, and the fact that many people continue to use dialup.. and modern systems no longer require the dialup isp to maintin a seperate circuit for each and every dialup user, because they have a 'digitial' connection... Also DSL can optionally be a 'dedicated' circuit meaning every other non dedicated circuit would have to be occupied by a 911 call for it to be dropped. something that can happen, in a disaster.. but not normally.

*= this happened a lot when i used dialup, every 2-3 days or so, circuits would get loaded for whatever reason, and my call would get dropped because it became lowest priority, if circuits cleared i would reconnect, but sometimes it took 5 or more minutes for enough circuits to clear...

Re:I'll tell you what happens..

[Ex Machina]

They usually have either an actual GPS chip and/or some stuff to assist in location triangulation from cell towers. This is usually mentioned as "enhanced 911".

Re:I'll tell you what happens..

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

Even my cheap cell phone has GPS in it. I can't go geocaching with it, but it's a basic feature for them to be able to locate me in an emergency. In fact, I recommend everybody who is concerned about their 911 coverage from VoIP service to just buy a cheap pay as you go phone. IIRC, you can still make 911 calls on a cell phone without having an active service plan. A cheap VirginMobile K7 would do the trick. Or any GPS capable phone from eBay.

Re:I'll tell you what happens..

[squiggleslash]

You may be, but that's your own problem. If you're one of the 1% of Vonage customers who actually uses it using a laptop where you might concievably be anywhere, then you're just going to have to give an address where you're most likely to be at, and then avoid using the service for 911 calls.

The FCC has been pretty reasonable on this one. They're not asking anyone to put GPS devices in laptops or create some kind of database of every IP address known to man. They've said that VoIP providers are to get an address from every single customer to say where they are, and put the onus on those customers to keep the VoIP provider updated should they move around. Obviously, if you use your VoIP as a mobile phone, which is, frankly, bizarre, then you have to recognize 911 isn't going to be that useful to you. Which it isn't today either.

I'm staggered by the outright stupidity of most Slashdotters on this subject. They assume, without bothering to read a line of the FCC stuff, that the FCC doesn't understand the basic issues concerning VoIP and have simply mandated something completely idiotic. In fact, the FCC has mandated this to make VoIP credible. The big issue here wasn't that VoIP providers didn't want to provide 911 services, it was that incumbent carriers refused to allow VoIP to peer with them for 911, so VoIP providers couldn't provide proper 911.

To solve this, the FCC has said: (1) VoIP providers need to be upfront and honest about the limitations of their services as-is. (2) They need to get customers to provide information on their whereabouts and provide the means for those customers to update that information in a timely manner. and, the biggy, (3) local carriers must work with VoIP providers. If you choose, as a customer, to not provide your VoIP carrier with timely updates, then that's your problem, not the VoIP supplier. The FCC isn't saying otherwise.

So relax.

Nanny state

[91degrees]

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.

Just do a "Registration Required" for every call

[Mortimer82]

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.

Re:Dialing 911 with VoIP?

[KingSkippus]

If I were really in an emergency, I wouldn't even use a cell phone.

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.

Why don't I understand the big deal?

[CrackedButter]

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.

What we need

[Cytlid]

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.

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 ... so I made sure everyone in the family has cell phones and they know to use them to call 911.

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...

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...

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.