[Asterisk-biz] Vonage bows to 911 pressure

[Preston Garrison]

I think someone needs to stand up and start up a service that provide 
E911 service based on a per call, or per customer level. Its a big 
opportunity for someone to tap into a market that has not been tapped 
into yet, and it would be a welcomed service to many providers. getting 
your own E911 service together may be feasible, however alot of 
providers may trust someone else to do it that has spent alot of time 
figuring out all the quirks. Vonage didn't even want to do it on their 
own, and that should tell you something about it. If it was that 
simple, why would they need to partner with verizon to do it?

 Preston Garrison
 direct: 877-748-4142
 fax: 310-774-3901
 cell: 623-748-4140

 -----Original Message-----
 From: alex at pilosoft.com
  To: Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion 
<asterisk-biz at lists.digium.com>
 Sent: Thu, 5 May 2005 19:38:37 -0400 (EDT)
 Subject: Re: [Asterisk-biz] Vonage bows to 911 pressure

 On Thu, 5 May 2005 bclem at im-online.net wrote:

  > This is something I've been wondering about. What does this mean for 
the
  > small US based VOIP providers? We don't have the cash or the 
resources
 > to partner with the verizon's of the world in order to provide E911
 > Services.
  > If the ruling comes down, doesn't this essentially kill all of us 
small
 > providers? This also helps the bigger boys too I would assume. Thus
 > unfairly providing advantage to them. We could bring a class action
 > lawsuit if it came down to it.
 >
 > What do you guys thing of all this mess and how it affects us?
 Instead of screaming "sky is falling", how about actually *doing*
  something about e911? Seriously, your users *need* it. You don't need 
to
  partner with all the "verizons", you only need to partner with someone 
who
 can deliver calls to 911 for you.

 There are three parts to have working e911 solution:

  1) Knowing which PSAP to deliver calls to. This is easier if your 
customer
 is at fixed location, otherwise, you need to have customer provide you
  with their location and pay someone (Intrado provides this) to 
translate
 physical address to the PSAP.

  2) Delivering calls to PSAP: Again, this is easier if you provide 
service
  in just a single LATA. In that case, the telco from whom you buy PRIs 
will
 deliver calls to the selective router, and selective router will route
 call to the correct PSAP based on the ANI passed by you.

  If you provide nationwide service, it is more complicated, as in 
general,
  PSAPs don't have a callable "10-digit number" (that you can call like 
a
 regular number on PSTN), and you have to deliver calls to the correct
  selective router. However, there's push by NENA and Intrado to make 
PSAPs
  have a "10-digit number" that would be answered 24/7 by the 911 
calltakers
 (just like the selective router number). So this may change.

 In order to deliver calls to selective router, you should first inquire
  with whoever provides you with the origination service. *they* 
certainly
  have LATA presence and can deliver the calls to it. Now, your carrier 
may
  or may not provide this service, but its not rocket science, and if 
push
 comes to shove, everyone obviously will do this.

 3) Assume that you managed to deliver call to the correct PSAP. Now,
 call-takers need to find the location of the caller. The database of
 locations is called "PS/ALI" (from the old "private switch/automatic
  location identification" that was used so companies with large pbxs 
could
  tell the emergency responders exact location (building/floor) of a 
given
  phone number). Generally, these databases are maintained as a service 
by
  the ILEC. Sometimes, you can contract with ILEC directly to get access 
to
 the local database, more often, you will probably want to work through
  Intrado to update the records. It ain't cheap, but again, it is not 
rocket
 science.

  The only class suits you should be thinking about are suits filed by 
your
 customers' estate when someone dies because you didn't provide e911
 service.

  Yes, doing proper telephony is hard. Yes, maybe smallest shops (aka a 
guy
 with cable modem and asterisk at home) will be unable to compete. But
 frankly, I think its a good thing for the industry.

 Alex Pilosov | DSL, Colocation, Hosting Services
 President | alex at pilosoft.com 877-PILOSOFT x601
 Pilosoft, Inc. | http://www.pilosoft.com

 _______________________________________________
 Asterisk-Biz mailing list
 Asterisk-Biz at lists.digium.com
 http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz