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FCC Extends VoIP 911 Deadline
a.different.perspect writes "The Federal Communications Commission has extended the deadline for formal acknowledgement of the limitations of the Enhanced 911 service used by VoIP providers by 30 days, to September 28. The FCC requires that VoIP companies in the United States inform and receive acknowledgement from all their customers of the pitfalls of E911, which corresponds 911 calls made on a VoIP service with the physical address of the caller according to company records but which won't report correct information if, for example, a customer uses their VoIP phone away from their registered address. Currently 1.5 million VoIP subscribers have confirmed their acceptance of E911, but 100,000 are yet to respond and had faced the termination of their service."
Wouldn't you have thought that this would have been a requirement upon the initial activation of the service for liability reasons? I mean seriously, if you can get sued over hot coffee (mcdonald's, not GTA ;) ) then I think this could really get you pwnd. No, I haven't RTFA. It just sounds like a bunch of idiocy anyway.
australian project gutenberg is better than the original.
Have they tried calling?
Make sure they can't place a phone call to *anyone* because the 911 mechanism is affected. So now even if they can give their address verbally they can't call.
Brilliant, but there's the FCC at work.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
So, in an emergency, not only can't they call 911, they can't even ring the house next door.
(The thing about a cheap shot is that the price is always right...)
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
Fantastic logic, that FCC.
Since you haven't acknowledged the 911 issue, we're gonna disconnect your phone.
Maybe the Surgeon General should adopt the same tactic for smoking, ripping out your lungs for refusing to acknoledge the dangers of cigarettes.
This shit can only be brought to us by the same fun filled people who gave us the Iraqi war.
now the only people who can get into VoIP are the rich companies or companies that made their bucket of cash already becuase of ever increasing regulations and other bullcrap from the government. this also affects our ability to get dirt cheap plans as well.
VoIP cannot be trusted for emergencies.. what if your DSL or cable modem goes out? it seems like that this should be common sense, but becuase it isn't, instead of people being smart enough to keep their landlines around for emergencies, we have this insane stuff going on now.
Emergencies? Where's the batsignal when you need it?
he killed her own child by signing up for a service that didn't fit her needs.
Ok, you cancel your landline and buy a mobile phone. The mobile phone doesn't work in your area. DO you sue T-Mobile?
I think the real problem is that VoIP is being marketed as a replacement as replacement for normal phone service. I don't recall any mobile phone commericals that say "Buy a wireless phone and drop your phone service," but I do recall ones that say "Buy VoIP from is and drop your normal phone service."
I think the average person here knows about the problems with VoIP, but I doubt the average person does. Also, what about people who dial 911 from a VoIP phone who don't know its a VoIP phone (eg, you have a heart attach and a friend calls 911).
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
I would be more comfortable calling 911 if they called it Healthline.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
They signed up for VOIP. They have no one to blame but themselves.
It all depends. Were they made clear ont the limitations of the service, in clear writing, ie not in the small print. For example Google Talk clearly states "Google Talk is not a telephony service and cannot be used for emergency dialing".
I think a distinction needs to be made between "internet telephony", which would require providing essential services and "voice chat", which would require people to maintain a standard line of communications.
Either way this distinction is likely to blur and it is going to be important to work out issues, such as the ability to recognise where you are dialing from. Maybe what we need are routers which support geolocation, by specifying a grid-ref?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I advise the NYC City Council's Tech committee, which oversees City laws about such things. We had a hearing last year about E911/VoIP, at which several telco execs (RBOCs and VoIP) testified, including Citron, Vonage CEO. They all assured us this wasn't a big problem, that only a few people hadn't registered their location with the website, that though their technical overhead in doing it right was huge, they were doing a good job anyway, voluntarily, please don't hurt us with your laws, don't make VoIP a "phone company" by law.
I've had Vonage for a couple of years. My mobile phone service is totally reliable in my apartment, and it's the phone I'd use in an emergency - it's my backup if my dual-WAN for my Vonage phone were to somehow fail (like another giant, long blackout). So I didn't register my 911 location with Vonage. Last year, a few months after the hearing, I got an email requesting I register. I tried to do so on their website, but the form failed. I emailed them with a problem report. They emailed back, a real person offering to take my info in reply email and they're enter it for me. I blew it off to see what would happen. No one ever contacted me again, though there was now a live person at Vonage who knew that my info wasn't in the system, though I wanted it to be. They didn't follow up on the common case of their reply getting lost in email glitches. I'm sure that at least tens of thousands of other New Yorkers with Vonage also had no E911 location info registered, but always believed they could pick up their phone and dial 911 just like a regular phone. Which, in a dangerous city like NYC, with regular crime, fires, blackouts, planebombs, and the highest level of terrorist activity/risk in the USA, is an unacceptable risk.
Last month I got a barrage of email from Vonage, facing the FCC deadline, insisting that I register or waive registration. Twice a day. And automated phonecalls. Threatening to cut off my service if I didn't register. So I did. But it was very long overdue.
Vonage has had my phone number for two years. They should have had the automated calls, prompting me to register or waive, right from the beginning. The telephone adapter box should ring the phone every time it's power cycled (relocated), asking me to go to the website, or finally to speak my name and address (or waiver) into a recording, which Vonage transcribes to their database. Transcription costs something like $0.25 for an address; Vonage could tack that charge on my bill. Why don't they do it? Because they don't care, until the FCC threatens to take away their toy.
"We don't care. We don't have to care. We're the phone company." - Evangeline (as played by Lilly Tomlin)
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make install -not war
I really don't understand the big deal about VOIP anyway. Sure, cheap international phone calls are nice, but that's still a niche market. My cell phone has a boatload of minutes, lots of competition, and nationwide calling without long distance fees. The ONLY reason I could see moving to a landline again is so that 2 people could be on an extension at the same time, but there are devices out there that allow cells to connect to landline infrastructure in the home. As far as the bandwidth needed to move everyone to a cell phone, I don't think that's an issue. After all, I see many people just hanging on phones all the time in cars, walking down the street, etc. I don't think they'd be sitting at home yacking away like that, because they're on their way to someplace. The rest of us are going to follow normal, predictable calling patterns, which require a normal precictable engineering solution (and maybe yet another spectrum auction).
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Being disconnected from 911 because you refused to acknowledge a letter saying that you run the risk of being disconnected from 911 if you rely on VOIP.
Only a world-class bureaucracy could come up with this idea.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Thanks to that bitch McDonalds only serves warm coffee now. I am so sick of hearing about how the coffee was scalding hot, it couldn't have been hotter than 100 degrees and we drink tea at 95+.
Face it, she spilled coffee on herself, and got rich out of her own mistake.
You argument is very sound, because as we all know, coffee is made for drinking, and bleach is also made for drinking. Therefore, spilling coffee on you is the same thing as putting bleach in your eye. Because only dumb people spill their coffee, and they DESERVE to get 3rd degree burns for it.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
As recently as 5 years ago, some towns in NJ and PA didn't have 911 service. Payphones (and phones of people who got them) had little stickers:
FIRE: xxx-xxxx POLICE: xxx-xxxx AMBULANCE: xxx-xxxx
Also, the town where I went to college had 911 service, but it was just forwarded to the main desk at the police station - at night, it was forwarded to the police station in a nearby larger town since there was no desk sargeant on duty at night. No fancy county-wide control center or whatever, just a call-forwarding service. I have no idea how cell phones worked there since I didn't have one at the time. (Finally got one like 3 weeks ago because I needed phone #s in both NYC and NJ).
-b.
Brilliant.
How we know is more important than what we know.
How exactly is it that the FCC is able to dictate what VOIP companies must do? Why is nobody questioning their "authority"?
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
There are more pressing concerns.
Think about it. Your telephone needs to be the most reliable piece of equipment in your house in the case of an emergency. Yet, battery backups for VOIP setups are not legally required.
A lot of good E911 service will do you if your phone doesn't work when the power is out.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Most of the 100,000 account holders are most likely just as plain irresponsible.
It'll get their attention. Sometimes, people have real listening problems and you have to do something that affects them to get them to listen to you.
We face this at work with hacked systems all the time. We got an e-mail that we have a compramised Linux system spewing attacks. We tracked it down, and pulled the plug, and left a note on the console saying not to plug it back in without contacting us (us being the IT guys). Some time later, it started back up again, we went up and unplugged it and yelled at the student responseable. They said they'd fix it.... And it started up again. Clearly they figured they'd just ignore us and we'd go away. So, we shut off the port to the lab. THAT got their attention, and they finally went and fixed their computer.
Same thing here I imagine. The FCC wants to make sure that people understand how 911 works on their line. However some people are refusing to respond and acknowledge they understand. Well ok, clearly they need a little more enxouragement. Turning off their line will probably do it.
Ok so maybe it's somewhat extreme but the FCC really wants to make sure people understand the limitations on 911 service on VoIP. People have gotten so used to ubiquitious, stable 911 that they don't think about it. They just assume they can punch those magic numbers whenever, wherever, and help will come. Well, VoIP has some limits to that and the FCC wants to make sure you are aware of it.
I consider your implicit acceptance of geolocated devices to be dangerous.
And inaccurate, since our bells can't deliver 99.99 uptime. or 99.999, I dunno but there is certainly an SLA they do NOT reach. So what VoIP SLA is acceptable to you. Please name it.
Where in the HELL did I indicate I wanted to let off companies for the rules they were under at any particular time? Are you suffering from Alzheimers?! The rules were SIGNIFICANTLY differenct only 8 months ago. Before: 911 optional, After: 911 mandated. I mean, What is so simple to understand as that?!
While in the event of an emergency it can be very dangerous not to have any 911 services. Although.... it is much more dangerous not to have any form of phone communications at all! Maybe the FCC thought about this when they extended the deadline!
Forget the "rules", the loopholes telcos engineer and Vonage is surfing. What's more important is that actual 911 service is necessary, and expected by the Vonage customers who don't have it. If Vonage is offering their service as 911 replacement, it's their responsibility to ensure it's as reliable as the acceptable service from the RBOCs.
YOU are the one trying to have a debate about the "rules". *I* said "letting companies like Vonage off the hook when they try to put the bottom line ahead of their customers' safety". Their actual safety, not just compliance with the rules. I never said they were breaking any rules, except perhaps the ones about lying to our committee about their customers' rate of voluntary georegistration.
Georegistration, as is now required by the FCC, was Vonage's voluntary response to the requirement. Getting most customers to do it would have made them safer years ago. All it took was a rule change, and suddenly Vonage was motivated to do it. That shows just how little Vonage, and Citron, care about their customers. And it shows just how much more important to you is "following the rules", even when that's insufficient to protect people adequately, and everyone knows it.
That's all very simple to understand, except when you try to complicate the scene by arguing about irrelevancies like whether Voange was complying with an inadequate rule, while lying about how well their "extra action" was compensating for its obvious inadequacy.
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make install -not war
There is a flaw in VOIP (lame 911 support). They're working on fixing it.
In the meantime, for the saftey of its users, the FCC requires the customer to *acknowledge* they understand the limitations.
I have Vonage and received an e-mail (or it appears when you log in) and you click a checkbox and you're done.
What's so hard about this?
If it requires Vonage to shut your phone service off to get your attention and all you have to do is click a checkbox to turn it back on, I don't see the harm.
Extending the deadline is silly. If they would just shut the service off, you'd have people responding a lot faster than hoping they respond to something they've clearly not already responded to.
What about the costs (in $, time, lives, whatever) to the EMS unit(s) that replies to an E911 call placed from a SIP phone in Indonesia but registered as a Peoria phone number. "Help, there are 5 masked men with explosives and machine guns bursting through the windows right now. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" That might make for an exciting Saturday night in Peoria.