There's a good post today on the excellent VoIPNews blog that I want to point out.

Nomadic VoIP's Double E911 Troubles

Both knowing where users are and delivering their emergency calls are a lot trickier than with fixed VoIP

Robert Poe

It's every
VoIP operator's nightmare. A customer dials 911, and instead of the
warm voice of an emergency dispatcher, hears only the chilling tones of
a failed call. Injury or even death result.

When
it comes to avoiding such scenes, providers of fixed VoIP service, such
as cable MSOs, have it easy compared to those offering "nomadic"
service, the kind that lets users plug an Internet phone or adapter
into a broadband connection anywhere. 

One
reason for this difference is well known: Nomadic VoIP users, who can
take their service with them when they travel or move, may not bother
to let the operator know they're visiting grandma at her broadband Palm
Beach condo. If they don't, it won't know not to keep routing 911 calls
to the emergency dispatchers back home in Hoboken.

Fixed VoIP providers, by contrast, deliver their
service through equipment such as embedded multimedia terminal adapters
(EMTAs) connected to residential cable outlets, and tied to the cable
service. They know where their users are. 

But
a second difference represents a costlier challenge for nomadic VoIP
operators. Even if users dutifully report their whereabouts, connecting
them with the right emergency dispatcher, and getting the right
information to the dispatcher, is a complex task. Doing it properly
requires having detailed information about, and interaction with, the
dispatch centers, or public safety answering points (PSAPs), serving
every address where users might find themselves.

While it may not be a direct concernt to businesses deplyoing VoIP internally today, the issues of VoIP and E911 have been significant hurdles. Fixed mobile convergence (FMC) brings another set of mobility issues that the service provider market will struggle with. These are not trivial issues, and the FCC continually steps in tryign to pound the round peg of VoIP into the square hole of traditional PSTN telephony.

It's a good read.


Technorati Tags: VoIP, fixed mobile convergence, E911

Technorati Tags: VoIP, fixed mobile convergence, E911