FCC Finally Admits That Rolling Deadline Equals No Deadline At All

from the no,-seriously? dept

Tue, Nov 8th 2005 10:00am — Mike Masnick

While it's nice that the FCC can be flexible after presenting outrageous demands of companies, it certainly does make them look pretty silly. When the FCC got tough on VoIP 911 service, they set up two deadlines. The first, in July, was to have all VoIP providers get proactive confirmation from every customer that VoIP 911 service was different than regular 911 service. Of course, as the "deadline" approached and the FCC realized that thousands of VoIP customers were going to be cut off for no clear reason (potentially making them even less safe), they backed down and delayed the deadline a month. A month goes by... and they delayed the deadline again. Another month? Another delay. If you hadn't figured it out by now, it appears that no one takes the FCC very seriously on this sort of thing, so it should come as no surprise that, today, they meekly ditched the deadline completely, and simply asked for VoIP providers to report on their progress on the matter. However, in an effort to appears to still have a spine, the FCC added a condition: VoIP providers can no longer sell in markets where they don't offer E911 service, even if they offer perfectly valid 911 service. This, despite, continually rolling over for the mobile phone industry whenever it has requested (and, boy has it requested it often) delays in requiring E911 service.

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Clifford VanMeter, 8 Nov 2005 @ 12:20pm

VOIP Threat to Client Base
Most FCC employees aren't lifers. They have plans to move to the "private sector" once their sentance as an underpaid and overworked federal hack is over. Its not about serving the public interests, its about pandering to the client-base -- their potential employers. VOIP hasn't got the market share the big Telcos offer, or the fat consulting fees for ex-federal workers -- that's why the FCC rolls over on e911 for them, and tries every way they can to stick it to the VOIP industry. It simply looks better on their resume.
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