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VoIP Providers Worry as FCC Clams Up

Posted by samzenpus on Thu Jul 21, 2005 04:23 AM
from the 911-404-error dept.
The Internet Technology
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."
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  • VoIP providers don't know what's gonna happen. Lots of lawyers try to pretend they know. FCC sticks with "no comment." In the end, everyone does whatever they want.
  • 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.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by onion2k (203094) on Thursday July 21 2005, @04:48AM (#13122370) Homepage
      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.
      • I agree but I think there is something that needs to be addressed as well with voip. The fact that you need to provide your address.

        I don't how 911 determines where you live but I assume it has to do with caller-id connected to a database of addresses. Can someone clarify why they (the voip companies) can't provide necessary info for 911?
        • Which address do I tell the VOIP service to pass onto 911?

          Using a laptop and roaming means I may connect from anywhere.
          Its useless sending emergency services to my home when I'm lying in a ditch somewhere.
          • the same one cell phones do: a GPS address.

            the only problem is they would then be required to build GPS into all of the VoIP phones/equipment...
              • 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.. (Score:4, Interesting)

                by SomeoneGotMyNick (200685) on Thursday July 21 2005, @07:15AM (#13122872) Homepage Journal
                Even my cheap cell phone has GPS in it. I can't go geocaching [geocaching.com] 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 [virginmobileusa.com] would do the trick. Or any GPS capable phone from eBay.
                • 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 [wikipedia.org], 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

          • Re:I'll tell you what happens.. (Score:5, Insightful)

            by squiggleslash (241428) * on Thursday July 21 2005, @08:08AM (#13123274) Homepage Journal
            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.

        • Re:I'll tell you what happens.. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by kesuki (321456) on Thursday July 21 2005, @06:11AM (#13122624) Journal
          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...

      • Can't vonage be used without hooking it up to a phone?

      • It already is up to me as a customer. I don't have a landline or VOIP, thus no 911. What would the goverment do, break down my door, and hold me at bay by gun point while they install a giant red telephone for direct 911 access?

        Regardless of all the avenues government is trying to act without regard to consumer choices, via the "municipal" services route... the consumer still has a choice in telephony.

        Yes, I can refuse 911 service. I do refuse 911 service. Not that I "care" if I had it or not, but I se
      • . . .because, quite rightly, everyone expects every single phone everywhere should be able to call 911 at any time.

        Except. . .that they don't. Or was that sarcasm? It should be, unless "everywhere" somehow means "The USA" It's quite amusing getting woken up at 7am local time because my sister who I'm visiting hasn't checked the checkbox on Vonage's site acknowledging that she doesn't have E911. Why is this amusing, and why are they calling at 7am? My sister lives in Japan.

        I've been a customer of Vonag

        • If you don't have 911 service properly configured, you are asking for a lawsuit. Similar problems have happened in the past with PBX systems. Someone has a heart attack and the ambulance gets sent to corporate headquarters, where the PBX is located, not to the satellite office where the 911 call was originated. The legal system being what it is, I'd expect the lawyer to sue the owner of the phone and everyone else who had any involvement in providing service to the phone and routing 911 calls. If I was a VO
    • 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.
    • This should be totally optional to the customer. If they don't want to set it up.. fine.. that's their problem, not OURS...

      Yes, it should be, and if the US weren't so sue-happy, it probably would be. As it stands, they are much less likely to be sued by forcing you to activate E911 than by allowing you to not have it. Because even if they had paperwork on file with your signature declining E911 service, they have no guarantee that that paperwork won't get lost...and in the event of your untimely death,
      • Because even if they had paperwork on file with your signature declining E911 service, they have no guarantee that that paperwork won't get lost.

        Even worse - they might have signed, sealed, valid paperwork on file, but the courts rule that because it wasn't in your best interests to sign it (or you didn't know what you were signing) it's not your fault anyway.

        The world has changed. Now, it's always someone else's fault.
    • My VoIP provider was just the opposite. i was snet a letter that I had to sign stating what was NOT supported on 911 service on my line. really simple, if I sign and send it back I get $5.00 credit on my bill.

      broadvoice beats the crap out of vonnage. I pay less than 1/2 what you pay and they not only treat me like a great customer but allow me to have control over my equipment, something that vonnage flat out REFUSED to give me.

      I guess some companies are interested in keeping and building their custome
    • >>your image as a company not giving into the FCC and protecting your customers.. horrible.

      You actually expect them to break the law to protect your laziness? They have an obligation to their investors to remain in business too you know. If the FCC shuts them down for non-compliance with rules I guarantee it will serve no cause other than to scare the other vendors into fast compliance.

      I'm with you, it should be optional, but it isn't.
  • I have to say that at the price for my Speakeasy VOIP and quality/features I receive from them, I wouldn't care if they told me that 911 doesn't work at all. I hope POTS isn't having 911 be their main selling point. There were days when you wrote emergency numbers by your phone, it's not that tough.
    • Some areas no longer have emergency phone numbers for the fire and police department. The only way to talk to an emergency dispatcher is by calling 911.

  • Just do a "Registration Required" for every call (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mortimer82 (746766) on Thursday July 21 2005, @05:22AM (#13122474)
    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.
  • Jesus...I can't believe I'm actually about to agree with the FCC, but here goes...

    I know this is a pain for most of you who use voice IP services, but this is actually a pretty reasonable rule. Everyone in America is taught from a very early age to dial "911" if you're in serious trouble. And the FCC has gone to great lengths to make sure that those calls always get connected. Payphones don't charge for them. Cell phones, even if they don't have service established, are supposed to put them through. A

    • So how, unless the FCC mandates that all IP addresses have a centrally-registered physical location, should they go about doing it?

      I live in a condo. If my parents were visiting and took their Vonage box and brought it with them and plugged it in, how can Vonage be sure they've reregistered the address? They can't. So 911 won't work from that phone.

      You can't use GPS or something, no guarantee of getting a signal. Plus, living in a condo, GPS would only approximately tell someone where it was, not which un
        • You're missing the point. I bring my PAP2 with me almost every time I travel. Its convenient, and one of the reasons I use Vonage.

          Without a nationwide registry mapping IPs to physical addresses, how will they tell emergency services where to go?

          I *do* have a 911 address registered at home. But there's no way they can do that automagically. And they can't restrict the use of the interface box to a single physical location.

  • An idea, (Score:2, Insightful)

    by deimtee (762122)
    One of the points made is that there is sometimes no way to tell the location of a VOIP phone, which is a problem if you are unable to talk.

    How about if the VOIP app. insisted that you record a 30 second emergency message (stating your location/name/whatever) when being installed and then watched what numbers you were dialling. If you ever dialled 911, and then if there was more than 20 seconds of dead airtime, began to play the message over and over.

  • Why don't I understand the big deal? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CrackedButter (646746) on Thursday July 21 2005, @06:19AM (#13122651) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • The reason is twofold: idealogical and logical.

      From an idealogical perspective, the government regulationg internet packets (because that's all VoIP is) is chilling. What's next? Skype? AIM and MSN voice chat? Do those have to call 911 next? You can use Skype to connect to POTS landlines as well. Should Skype be outlawed in the US because it's not subject to the 911 requirement the other companies are using. What about when people choose Skype because it's not regulated, effectively being the FCC causing b
    • 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 do
      • Don't call the nice Brit a troll. In case you didn't notice, registering your meatspace co-ords with a VOIP provider won't change the problem you describe, so his point is still well made: they could register the address of the VOIP customer as a first point, and then hassle people to change it when they move.

        I reckon the solution will only come with GPS receivers in all handsets, VOIP and cell, myself.

        J.

  • What we need (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Cytlid (95255) * on Thursday July 21 2005, @06:33AM (#13122704) Homepage
    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...
  • As being with a VoIP in .au, we have been thinking about this issue and found a very simple one: Setup a chain of authority for the data.

    At the begin of the search there is a phone number being called from.

    The phone number is owned by a certain telco, which terminates it at a certain PRI. This is just database stuff, it's known where the PRI terminates. 911 looks up the number in this database, and gets a refferral[sp] to the VoIP provider.

    The VoIP provider knows what VoIP-phone has that number, and thus
  • Where? It wasn't listed on the main www.fcc.gov website on the 29th of June... when was it published.. anyone have a linkie?
  • I just unpacked an ISDN router, and there was a prominent warning in the box that if I'm using an ISDN phone that 911 service can't be guaranteed in the face of a power failure.

    I don't see why VoIP services should be required to do more than prominently display similar warnings.
  • The FCC is simply stifely innovation in this area. That's what happens when most of your funding comes from the companies you are regulating. NO government agency should be allowed to make and threaten to enforce rules without cleary annunciating the consequences of breaking them. This tack on the FCC's part is on purpose. Their constituants do not want VoIP to take off. It will harm their business. This is a great way to keep investors out of the area, as they will not risk their dollars, not knowing

  • Give me a break (Score:3, Informative)

    by Programmer_In_Traini (566499) <eniac0@@@gmail...com> on Thursday July 21 2005, @07:59AM (#13123196)
    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...

  • This is complete BS (Score:3, Interesting)

    by acoustix (123925) on Thursday July 21 2005, @08:40AM (#13123515) Homepage
    The FCC gave cell phone providers over 10 years to figure out 911 services. Now they want VoIP companies to do the same thing in 10 months? You would think that the FCC, of all government agencies, would understand the problems that VoIP has to overcome.

    -Nick
    • Hopefully the FCC would get enough seriously negative feedback from consumers that they won't try this shit again.

      And I'm sure VoIP providers (many of which are commercially run) will be happy to risk the bad publicity. [/sarcasm]

      What's more likely is that the VoIP providers will call the FCC's bluff. After all, the FCC might not do anything.
    • In these days of cell phones and VoIP not everyone has a landline. I know that I don't.

    • Re:Dialing 911 with VoIP? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by KingSkippus (799657) on Thursday July 21 2005, @05:45AM (#13122547) Homepage Journal
      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.

      • 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.

        That's why I like GSM, and why kept my old GSM phone... On all GSM phones (well, at least in Europe, not sure about the rest of the world), you can dial the emergency number 112, without a subscription or even without a simcard inserted into the phone. Try it... even if a phone is locked by a PIN code, you should be able to enter a PIN of 112

        • In the U.S., all cell phones (even ones without plans attached to them) must be able to dial 911.

          In theory, someone can take an old cell phone, throw it in the glove compartment of their car, never have to pay a cent, and if they are in an area with coverage they can dial 911 from it if they get in an accident.
    • I'll stick to my land-line in case of emergencies, thank you very much.

      I'm curious--what would you do in the event that lightning struck your demarc outside our house and in the process frying all your landlines and catching your house on fire? How about if a tornado ripped up the telephone pole where your copper terminates? Or a burglar cuts your lines hoping to kill your security system?

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