Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 9:39 PM EST
By: Ari Rabban
Voice over IP pioneer (and friend), Jeff Pulver wrote a great blog post yesterday hailing the New and Emerging Technologies 911 Improvement Act of 2008 signed by President Bush.
Quoting Jeff, this law “finally provides VoIP providers with better tools for direct access to the 911 network and the liability relief necessary”. Further, “This is the first major piece of telecommunications legislation signed into law this year — and it happens to be a bill designed to help advance VoIP”.
“…VoIP providers have made extraordinary efforts and now provide E911 to a greater percentage of subscribers than any other kind of voice service. Its been the fastest and broadest onetime implementation of E-911 in the history of public safety. As a result of these unprecedented effort by VoIP providers, Americans who dial 911 using interconnected VoIP services can now rest assured they can reach help in an emergency. It is a particularly remarkable achievement considering that no underlying network connectivity provider can yet offer VoIP providers the ability to connect to all selective routers nationwide. This bill now gives VoIP providers a chance to expand their base, and VoIP consumers assurances that they can be safe and secure using a dependable VoIP service”…
… “The advent of VoIP, including interconnected VoIP services, is ushering in a new era of disaster-proof communications systems. VoIP and other IP-based communications services increasingly serve as the foundation of “survivable” networks that provide reliable and efficient connectivity in emergency situations even when key infrastructure has been disabled or destroyed. Because it operates over decentralized IP networks with redundant paths between any two points, interconnected VoIP service mitigates the dire consequences that can otherwise result from single points of failure.
The VoIP communications industry is justifiably proud of the technology’s achievements in the public safety arena, and it continues to make emergency services a key priority. Yet in light of interconnected VoIP’s impressive track record and largely untapped public safety potential, VoIP providers need this new law to help remove the barriers that can make these vital public safety technologies available in more regions and in more ways”.
So what does this low actually mean? The VoIP industry as a whole showed another major step of its maturity and its ability to provide quality service both as replacement to incumbent services and complementary! It means that the legislators have recognized VoIP to deserve equal protection as the incumbents.
Quoting from the VON Coalition press release: “(the new law) Gives public safety, interconnected VoIP providers and others involved in handling 911 calls the same liability protections when handling 911 calls from interconnected VoIP users as from mobile or wired telephone service users”.
Phone.com congratulates all involved!
One Comment
Mark Fletcher
July 25, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Nortel also supports this initiative and is pleased to see that our continued efforts for public education of E911 as well as location discovery of VoIP and nomadic IP devices in a corporate environment are reinforced and specifically called out in this important Act.
Millions of people spend much of their day in an office building using advanced VoIP communications, yet very few understand the impact that technology can have on E911 if not properly implemented and managed. Defining and enforcing standards in this environment can only save lives. We are proud to be a contributor to the solution for this growing problem.
NENA, the National Emergency Number Association has also been taking steps to encourage legislation at the state level, but the fact of the matter is that very few states (only 14 in fact)actually have any 9-1-1 laws on the books requiring enterprises to implement any additional functionality that would allow for a 9-1-1 dispatcher to obtain more accurate location information from their PBX. The saddest part of this story is that the technology actually exists, and is often left provisioned in many PBX systems installed today.
There have been stories in the news over the years of people who have experienced significant delays in emergency services response, or worse yet actually died, due to telephone system not having 911 implemented properly.
Thank you to all who contributed to this important legislation. Without the continued support from the telecommunications and Public Safety industry, actions like this would not be possible.
Mark Fletcher, ENP
Nortel
Emergency Services Product Line Manager
NENA
MLTS Workgroup Technical Subcommittee Chair