[Asterisk-biz] 911 Thread

Sat May 7 20:18:37 MST 2005

Well among other idiotic questions that the FCC or the politicians or 
lawyers CAN'T answer...

Let me start here..

1- If my someone is kicking my door in and I have my handy dandy FRESHLY 
mandated VOIP service from one of the only few providers left after the FCC 
put all the others out of business....

and.. I pick up my phone, now feeling safe that the folks in DC have made 
sure I can call 911 and keep this bad guy from killing me..

As I pick up my phone to call 911 and I have no dialtone or my call won't go 
through because my cable internet connection is down AGAIN for the third 
time this week, who does my family sue after the bad guy kills me?

Do they sue the cable provider because they unlawfully allowed my DSL to be 
down right when I needed to make my 911 call?

Or maybe it's the FCC for giving me this false sense of security by putting 
a law in place that can't possibly make my 911 as reliable as a pots line?

Funny how the FCC, politicians and lawyers want to put these laws in place 
because the poor consumer doesn't understand that they aren't getting the 
same 911 service that they get with a pots line. Seems like VOIP providers 
are being blamed for creating a false sense of security which is exactly 
what any laws would do.

WAKE UP lawyers, FCC and politicians, it's not a POTs line, it never will be 
so how is a law going to make VOIP as reliable in a 911 situation?

Internet connections go down all the time and this is what the phone service 
runs on!

Make all the laws you want, until you can make a law that will magically 
create a 100% reliable and redundant internet, 911 will never work on VOIP 
as it does on POTs.

ARGGG!!! They just don't get it!

I wish I had time to go to DC and hear the FCC respond to this..

Rant over, for now!

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

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul" <digium-list at 9ux.com>
To: "Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion" 
<asterisk-biz at lists.digium.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 07, 2005 5:50 PM
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-biz] 911 Thread

> Jason P. Talley wrote:
>
>> I just returned from DC where I had meetings with commissioners and their 
>> staff of the FCC regarding the upcoming May 19, 2005 meeting.  As most of 
>> you know there will most likely be an order issued regarding 911 and VoIP 
>> providers.  My concern after our meetings is that the proposed order will 
>> be very harmful to the VoIP industry, especially those providers without 
>> the ability or resources to provide 911 solutions.  It appears that if 
>> you provide VoIP services you are going to have to allow for any 
>> emergency call to be routed to the proper PSAP via the selective routers 
>> and allow for ALI via the database.  To my knowledge there is no 
>> provision that requires the ILEC to allow you access to the selective 
>> router and there is no IP method of interconnection.  This means that if 
>> you offer VoIP in a single market (ie you only have DIDs from one or 
>> limited rate centers) and your product is mobile (you can move it to 
>> different broadband connections) you will have to interconnect with all 
>> 6600+ PSAPS natively in the US.  This totally ignores the reality of 
>> having to pass 10 digit numbers instead of 7 digit numbers to the 
>> selective router.  This would require some type of innovation like 
>> pseudo-ani that the wireless industry uses right now  and we all know how 
>> long that took to implement.  As you can see, this is a tremendous 
>> burden. The order essentially mandates the NENA I-2 solution in the next 
>> 3-4 months without the tools to be able to do it.
>>
>>
>> Here at Nuvio we have invested some serious R&D into being able to offer 
>> a limited implementation of e911 in some of the rate centers that we 
>> serve, but it is far from being a perfect solution.  It certainly will 
>> not be sufficient for what we believe the FCC may be considering. 
>> Honestly, nobody could fulfill that right now.
>>
>>
>> While public safety is of paramount concern, and here at Nuvio we take it 
>> very seriously, it is not an issue that can be resolved within the next 
>> 3-4 months by simple mandate.  I expect that unless there are some 
>> serious revisions that go into place, this is going to be tough if not 
>> impossible for most VoIP providers to accomplish.
>>
>> We are mounting a campaign and I will be asking for help from those of 
>> you interested in participating.  I believe we have a responsibility for 
>> public safety, but any orders need to be technically and practically 
>> possible.
>>
>>
> Jason, thank you very much for being our voice with big brother in DC.
>
> This makes me wonder just how far the FCC intends to go when it comes to 
> voip termination for business. Let's take a look at some typical non-voip 
> phone system 911 issues first.
>
> 1) Does the FCC or any regulator require that the pbx switch handles 911?
>
> 2) If so, is it illegal to use or sell an old switch that doesn't handle 
> 911(or 9 for outside line followed by 911)?
>
> 3) If only up-to-date switches are legal does the FCC require battery 
> backup in case of power failure?
>
> 4) If battery backup is required, how much runtime is required?
>
> 5) When the switch fails for any reason(including exhausted batteries) 
> what are the requirements? Is there supposed to be a pots interface with a 
> red telephone always plugged in? Do all outbound T-1's and PRI's have to 
> include a pots interface for the "emergency phone"? Are we required to 
> have an extension jack with another red telephone on every floor and 
> within every n square feet of the building?
>
> Now think about adding voip to the above setup. As long as the system has 
> a single line or channel that the ILEC supports 911 on, what difference 
> does it make if we use voip for most termination. As long as we are 
> meeting the same requirements that go with a pbx connected to 
> analog/digital telco trunking, we are providing the same level of safety.
>
> If somebody already knows the answers to my questions above, please post 
> them. Then we can draft something to send to the lawmakers that makes it 
> clear that the FCC is way out of line.
>
> One thing we can point out about residential and business users with 
> traditional pots lines: There are many who only have telephones that 
> require a non-telco power source. All those phones come with warnings that 
> the phone will not work during a power failure. Many people never read the 
> warning. Many others read it and never heed it. If a bad guy turns off the 
> electricity and starts kicking the door in, how do you call 911 when you 
> only have a cordless phone? I just checked 2 of mine to be sure. Unplug 
> the power and you can't make calls from the handset or the base. So maybe 
> the FCC needs to outlaw those. Future models will have to also have a 
> trimline handset with a relay that connects it directly to the line when 
> power is off?
>
> It looks to me like the FCC already allows some possibly dangerous 
> practices. They just want to beat up on the voip crowd.
>
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