[Asterisk-biz] 911 discussion re-run

[William Lloyd]

I'll preface this by saying I know almost nothing about E911 other  
than attending a E911 session at Astricon last week. E911 is way  
harder to handle then it should be.  E911 has almost nothing todo  
with technology, it's simply about the Bell companies with the help  
of the FCC squashing most of the small ITSP out of business.

It's unbelievably messy and complicated to handle.  You two options  
basically are to make sure every client has an analog line and route  
his 911 calls out of that or signup with an E911 service provider for  
your customers.

One of the unknown area's is the legal liability.  Someone calls 911  
and the call doesn;t go through for the multitude of reasons VOIP  
suffers from.  Just imagine the lawsuits you'll be hit with.  Maybe a  
technically savvy user can sue for stress and worry in the event they  
need 911 and they know the limitations of VOIP that it might not  
work ;-)

Sounds like a good reason to incorperate your ITSP company outside  
the US.  Another reason to use an offshore holding company.

Browse the intrado web site.  They have a lot more information.

-bill

On 27-Oct-05, at 10:27 AM, Alistair Cunningham wrote:

> Brian,
>
> Well, ITSP in a box can of course forward 911 calls out T1s or to  
> an upstream VoIP provider. It can also allow users to edit the  
> address of the phone and store this in its database. Informing  
> users is a task for our customers' marketing departments, though we  
> could probably add some text to the add new telephone page.
>
> Is this sufficient? In particular, do we just need to store the  
> address on the system, or do we need to transmit it somehow with  
> 911 calls, update the PSAP's database, etc?
>
> Alistair Cunningham,
> Integrics Ltd,
> +44 (0)7870 699 479
> http://integrics.com/
>
>
> Brian C. Fertig wrote:
>
>> Its my understanding that any ITSP must comply with the US/Canada  
>> E911
>> regulatory service.  I don't know the new date as it was changed.   
>> Since
>> not all ITSP's have control of roaming users they must have the user
>> understand that it may not work in some areas that they are going  
>> to be
>> located while roaming.  There are a few services out there that offer
>> this service that cover the country but mainly it must cover their  
>> home
>> address.  Also you have to give the user the ability to change their
>> address on record in realtime with minimal update time with the
>> databases.
>> ..o-------------------------------------------------------o..
>> Brian Fertig
>> Network/Systems Engineer
>> IT Administrator
>> Planet Telecom, Inc.
>> Tampa,FL Office
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com
>> [mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Alistair
>> Cunningham
>> Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2005 10:00 AM
>> To: Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion
>> Subject: [Asterisk-biz] 911 discussion re-run
>> I'd like to re-open the 911 discussion. I know it's been discussed  
>> before, but not conclusively as far as I can see.
>> Does anyone know exactly what are the 911 obligations on providers  
>> offering VoIP services to residential and small business users in the
>> USA?
>> We'd like to make sure our ITSP in a box product complies before  
>> the formal launch. <plug> http://itsp.demo.integrics.com/ username  
>> 'guest', password 'guest' for those who haven't seen it.</plug>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Asterisk-Biz mailing list
> Asterisk-Biz at lists.digium.com
> http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz
>