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."

Comments

Re:Um

[The Dobber]

So let's say I'm over at my neighbors house and they suffer a heart attack. Should I stop and quizz them as to the functionality of 911 with thier service provider. Think a 5 or 6 year old child understands the implications?

911 exists for a reason, to rapidly and effectively provide emergency service.

Re:Um

[KnightMB]

She dialed 911 and got through just fine, she just blamed VoIP because of her tragedy and her lawyer is trying to cash in. That's the thing people forget, she dialed 911 and it worked (twice actually), again just someone trying to $$$ in on a tragedy.

Depends ....

[Midnight Thunder]

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?

Network Addresses?

[grumling]

Last I heard, everything on the Internet already has an address. Since we have these things called databases, we can match up a MAC address and a billing acount, why the heck can't we get all these combined together? Of course, we'd all need to have a static IP address, and we all know that that's impossible unless you pay extra. MOST of the people I know don't move their VOIP boxes around much anyway (oh, they all say how they can, but I've never seen it happen). I think the FCC is really getting ready for the rollout of the major player's VOIP systems, and the wholesale changeover of POTS to VOIP. This time will be looked at as a bump in the road for the likes of the RBOCS and Cable companies. Of course, the FCC will get lobbied by someone claiming to represent the 911 call centers of the world (but funded by the big telecom players) to get the portable/3rd party solutions outlawed, since they are hard to track for 911 service, and they'll walk in with their integrated database solution (with a 10. address on their network).

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).

Is 911 service universal?

[b0s0z0ku]

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.

Re:regulations screwing up VoIP

[rayvd]

Completely untrue.

We're a small ISP (under 10k customers) and have successfully launched VoIP using only open source products -- Asterisk, SER, etc.

Obviously there are some expenses involved, and you need someone who can set up the software; but nothing preventing smaller companies from giving it a go.

Banks call it warming the card

[MacFury]

The best way to get people to do something is to make them have to. My friend kept geting letters from the bank requesting his new address when he moved. He tossed them on his kitchen table and let them sit for a few weeks because he didn't care. Suddenly, his card doesn't work when he goes to lunch. Now he calls the bank, wondering why. The bank asks him for his new address and reactivates his card.

Most of the 100,000 account holders are most likely just as plain irresponsible.