[Asterisk-biz] Vonage bows to 911 pressure

Thu May 5 21:38:22 MST 2005

Well, until we have lots of extra lawyer money laying around, I want to stay 
as far from anything related to 911 as possible.

I would rather say that we don't provide it or find a way to not provide it 
and make sure my customer knows this then be liable for someone dying 
because we had a router down and couldn't get to 911.

To me, the idea of VOIP and 911 just kills me (pardon the pun). It's a great 
service but it's not near as reliable with all the links in the chain and 
possible points of failure, as TDM.

Fact is, if I was on my last leg and laying in a pool of blood I would 
rather have a POTS line to dial my 911! How about you folks?

I just think that requiring that we use 911 is almost silly..

Are they also going to require that we never have a failure on a piece of 
equipment or one of our data links?

It's all quite scary if you ask me.. One minute we are providing a great 
service, saving people money, adding features they can't get elsewhere.. The 
next we are responsible for peoples lives in a 911 situation? hmmm...

Just something to think about..

I would rather provide second line service and tell people to keep their 
primary line for emergency use.

Heck, what about when someone's crappy DSL connection is down when they need 
to call 911? Do I get sued too because they couldn't call 911? Oh or maybe 
it's there ISP that gets sued because their DSL was down when they wanted to 
call 911!

There is a LOT to think about, and I think some of these issues need to be 
brought up to the FCC.. It's not as easy as saying VOIP providers SHOULD be 
required to offer it. It's just not!!

Fact is, if people want a service as reliable as a copper line for emergency 
use or otherwise then they should keep the copper line.

When you decide to rip out all your copper and make the leap to 100% VOIP in 
your house, you also make the leap into a less reliable world of 
communications.

If you want 5 9's of service with 911, keep the copper and buy VOIP as a 
second line etc..

Sorry, rant over.. I just get real ticked with all these governmental 
agencies throwing around their BS when they have no clue what they are 
poking their heads into.

Private Label Wholesale Internet Access!
http://www.YourOwnISP.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Preston Garrison" <preston at mailblocks.com>
To: <asterisk-biz at lists.digium.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2005 7:55 PM
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-biz] Vonage bows to 911 pressure

>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
>
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