[Asterisk-Users] 911 and lawsuits

[Phil Menico]

Terence, Thank you for sharing your thoughts on our judicial system. I
am glad you are there and I am here.
<<(i'm not under jurisdiction of a ridiculous judicial system)>>

Anyway, I work in the 911 arena and in the US many states mandate that
you have E911 (identify the persons location and call back number to the
PSAP) depending on how much space your facility covers. Imagine a
company that is in a multi-building campus or multi-floor high rise
environment and an employee dials 911 and all the police get is the
trunk number at the police station. Imagine if he then faints and cannot
tell the PSAP where he is. 

In classic PBX's the telephone stations are more static and any moves
and changes are more hardwired and the changes are sent to the Telco
(PS/ALI) database. In VoIP the users are much more mobile. They can pick
up their Telephone (VoIP device) go somewhere else and plug into a
network jack and call 911. Now imagine this person having his SIP phone
in IOWA talking to the the telephone switch in New York via VPN and
dialing 911. The call will go to NYPD.

There is an organization called NENA that creates guidelines for 911
which most PBX vendors follow. The VoIP issue and 911 is a very big
issue and no one has an absolute solution (even though some claim they
do). The problem is really discovery of phone devices on the network end
points(which end switch and port they are plugged into, gets worse with
wireless).

The 911 issue is very real for large installations. For smaller ones
make sure you put an analog phone at the line coming from the CO or have
a single POTS line (usually a FAX line) to use in an emergency. As far
as dial tone, yes, even the big PBX's fail but they have 99.999% (at
least they claim?) uptime. The cheaper PC you provide the more failures.

In one company we put an enhanced 911 system and in the first week a
persons life was saved because of it. 

Don't take 911 lightly, its to save lives not to save law suits.

Thank you.

Phil Menico 


-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Terence
Parker
Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2004 12:43 PM
To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] 911 and lawsuits


It's just as well that here in Hong Kong employers don't have to worry
about being sued by their staff tripping over their own laces ; or
microwave oven manufacturers getting sued by old ladies drying off their
poodle ; or supermarket owners getting sued by stupid customers who trip
over their own kids. In most countries cases such as these would be
thrown out the minute they are filed.

Of course, these are slight exaggerations insofar as asterisk is
concerned - because being able to dial 911 (or 999 as it is in this part
of the world) is a much more 'genuine' problem. But nonetheless, it
should be the responsibility of the implementor of such a system to
ensure that there are adequate measures taken against system failure -
such as UPS, or even a primitive analogue phone line somewhere in the
home/office.

Though I cannot possibly comment regarding 'fear of being prosecuted',
simply because I have no reason to fear (i'm not under jurisdiction of a
ridiculous judicial system) - I would say that it is a huge shame that a
group of people all with the common goal of contributing towards free
software projects such as this should even have to worry about things
such as lawsuits.

If there are people out there who have problems with asterisk, I suggest
they just don't use it. To go as far as suing - that is just taking the
piss! (sorry, can't think of equivalent non-British term).

Terence


> > Just curious if any of the Asterisk installers are doing anything
special
> > to protect themselves from a possible lawsuit caused by 911 failure 
> > during a Asterisk/computer crash?
> >
> > I realize that any traditional PBX or even a phone line can fail 
> > but, anything running on a computer is probably going to be less 
> > reliable than most PBXs.
>
> What do you think most PBXs are? Maybe not a x86, but it is a 
> computer.
>
> > Anybody requiring customers to acknowledge and sign any kind of 
> > waiver?  Just the legal fees of defending yourself in a lawsuit 
> > could sink most Asterisk installers.



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