[Asterisk-biz] FW: 911 Legislation

[Bill Ford]

One of the other things that concerns the E-911 people is the funding.
You have to realize where a large percentage of the funding comes
from. Most 911 centers are funded..at least in part..by a $1.00 to
$2.00 tax on phone lines. When a customer goes from a POTS to VOIP
that tax goes away!

No Legislator wants to say anything about taxes, so they couch it in
Public Safety related terms.

The main thing here is the training of 911 call takers. A dispatcher
must not totally be dependent on the ANI-ALI display. Many people
(politicians) are under the mistaken impresstion that somehow, you can
take a relatively untrained person, plop them down at a console with
all of the latest hi-tech CAD stuff and they can be a dispather. This
view is fomented by the CAD vendors.  If a dispatcher can't dispatch
with a pencil and a notepad, no amount of hardware will make them a
good dispatcher.

By the way, I managed public safety dispatcher centers for a number of
years, and was the founding director of our local center.