Vonage 911 Deadline Passed

An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo is reporting that the FCC may block any new customers wishing to sign up with Vonage. The internet phone service company has passed the Monday deadline that was given to them to provide reliable 911 service. From the article: "The company -- which has more than 1 million subscribers -- said it was capable of transmitting a call back number and location for 100 percent of its subscribers, but that it still was waiting for cooperation from competitors that control the 911 network."

Fines

[Punboy]

Shouldn't the uncooperative companies be fined/sued? After all, they were supposed to cooperate and they didn't.

Re:Fines

[suso]

That would be Unamerican

I think that depends on whether the year is mod 4.

Calling on the road

[joe_n_bloe]

So I spend most of my Skype time "on the road" (as in, coffeeshops). How's a 911 dispatcher ever going to find me? Why would I expect one to without providing additional information? There's no infrastructure for tracing the location of IPs/MACs (and thank God for that).

If your IP phone is nailed to a wall, sure, this makes sense.

Otherwise, what, I have to have a GPS card plugged into my laptop and make all my calls outdoors?

Re:Fines

[Mundocani]

I think that would depend on whether they're truely being "uncooperative" or if Vonage is blowing smoke to cover up their own technical inadequacies.

Re:Simple Database?

[JesseMcDonald]

For the most part, that's what VoIP providers do. However, there are some issues with this system, the one of which is that some areas have more than one local phone number associated with the 911 service, usually based on the local schedule of the PSAP personnel. For example, 911 might connect to one number during the day and another at night. Normally, 911 calls are routed at the local switch, and so these rules can be programmed on a case-by-case basic, but with VoIP it's difficult to compile a complete list of PSAP numbers and the routing rules that they correspond to.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, however, the issue here is the current address of the caller is not readily available to VoIP providers. For example, a VoIP customer could sign up in one area, providing an address for 911 service. Later that customer could move to a new area with a completely different 911 service. As far as the VoIP provider is concerned, nothing has changed. The customer can still make calls normally. However, if the customer tries to call 911, the call would be routed to the wrong call center.

Re:Speakeasy

[Andy Dodd]

Most likely because unlike Vonage, Speakeasy's VOIP is basically tied to their DSL service.

Since DSL is offered over the copper phone lines, Speakeasy probably already has numerous agreements in place with local telcos regarding information about the telephone infrastructure.

Re:Fines

[XorNand]

From the time the FCC released the new rules, VoIP providers only had four months to provide E911 services to all of their customers. Wireless carriers (who have considerably more clout and better paid lobbyists), were given ten years to comply. Still think it's fair to start slapping fines on an industry that's barely out of the gate?

Re:Fines

[JWSmythe]

I'm a Vonage user, and have been for several months now.

    They've requested every user to provide a street address to their Vonage service.

    Unfortunately, this doesn't address the obvious problem with that. I, as a Vonage user, can plug my modem in anywhere. If I go to a friends house in another state or country, my phone numbers go with me.

    I, being technically adept, know that 911 won't work properly. I won't dial 911 from that phone.

    I like to have a phone number that isn't associated with a physical address, for various reasons. If I decide to sit down at a hotel in Moscow, and set up a VPN to make myself look like I'm in another country (say Canada), now I'll have an IP in Canada, with a phone number in America, but I'm sitting in Russia. The whole reason for doing this 911 thing isn't totally so emergency response can show up in case of emergency, while that is a nice feature. It's so the government can show up, should they have a phone number associated with someone doing something they don't like. I've noticed they've left the magic work "Terrorist" off this issue entirely.

    With POTS lines, they obviously go to an address, or somewhere very close. (cordless phone, or max wire length from that location).

    With Cell phones, E911 service reports the GPS coordinates. They are also traceable by cell towers and triangulation.

    With VoIP, at most they may get an IP, but at worst, you can make phone calls from anywhere, pretending to be anywhere else. That doesn't make the government very happy.

Re:Fines

[king-manic]

Shouldn't the uncooperative companies be fined/sued? After all, they were supposed to cooperate and they didn't.

Vonage: Hi, I want to steal all your customers from you and corrupt your business model, can you please help us enable 911 services on our phones. The government didn't say if you had to or not, please.. pretty please?

Re:Shouldn't the cell phone companies provide this

[mrchaotica]

You know, what they ought to do is stick a GPS tranceiver in the Vonage adapter and be done with it!

Re:Fines

[monkeydo]

Your paranoid elusion aside, real people have died because they tried to call 911 using a VoIP carrier. Great, you're savvy enough not to use that phone, but is your kid? Your wife? Your neighbor who finds you lying unconcious on the floor of your kitchen?

Not the VOIP providers fault

[merky1]

The problem with location identification is that we are focusing at the wrong location. ISPs should be the ones responsible for giving general locations to the VOIP provider. The VOIP provider doesn't know where the ISPs networks are, and making the VOIP provider responsible for this is going to fail miserably.

Again, yet another wonderful ideal from the morons in charge.

Re:Fines

[rk]

Yeah, that's really convenient for the big telcos to have a regulatory body force any new potential competitors to come to them hat in hand before they can operate. I'm sure that happened completely by accident.

Re:Fines

[Fatal67]

Why should a network provider get sued for not shouldering the expense of a product they aren't providing? Vonage is a parasitic company. They have no network. They have no facilities of their own to provide these services like E911. They are using other peoples network resources and then blaming them for not having E911 service. They want to provide services that require infrastructure, they should build an infrastructure of their own. End of story.

Re:Fines

[strikethree]

Erm, I think you misunderstood what he was saying. He was not saying to impose fines on Vonage, rather, he was saying that the companies who are preventing Vonage from complying should be fined.

HTH

strike

Re:Fines

[faedle]

Ironic sig.

"I miss freedom."

I miss freedom to create new products and services without having to worry about a federal government agency coming along and saying that I have to implement a whole slew of 'standards', while providing no funding or direction on how I'm supposed to do all this, and requiring that I deal with uncooperative vendors who have not only no fiancial or legal incentive to provide me this same service, but an actual DISincentive, because I'm their competitors.

I miss freedom too.

Re:Fines

[Loonacy]

IF you're at home, and your VOIP is properly configured with your address, then VOIP 911 is just as good as the POTS. If you're plugged in somewhere else - say, in another state - then it's most likely a temporary arrangement, and there will either be a standard phone to use, or there wasn't a phone there anyway. Why should VOIP be expected to give proper 911 service EVERYWHERE even places where you don't have a phone?