Does The FCC Know Cellular 911 Breaks?

from the i've-fallen-and-i-can't-get-up dept

Thu, Dec 22nd 2005 12:53pm — Carlo Longino

During a snowstorm a couple weeks ago, Massachusetts' enhanced 911 system that takes calls from mobile phones broke down, leaving people on cell phones unable to reach the authorities and emergency services, apparently due to a fault in the Verizon system that routes calls. Now, Jeff Pulver's wondering if -- in light of its overreaction to some isolated incidents involving VoIP and 911 -- the FCC realizes that sometimes wireless 911 fails, too. Following the incidents with VoIP 911, the FCC gave providers 120 days to implement E911, while they've let mobile operators drag the process out for years. Of course, given the way the FCC enforces deadlines, all this just reinforces the idea that the FCC reacted rashly to the VoIP E911 issue.

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Rikko, 22 Dec 2005 @ 3:39pm

911 breaks, nothing new
Last week our 911 call center for more or less the entire city of Vancouver was sporadically down for large parts of the day. No explanation other than the telco was "having technical problems" (that excuse becomes more and more of a wash as the citizen base gets smarter). This meant that cel lines, VOIP lines, and land lines were all equally unable to dial 911.

It's a fallible system, and there's no getting around it.

That said, I think all telephone services NEED to comply with (attempted) 100% 911 accessibility. Some VOIP providers have clearly been unable/unwilling/disinterested in achieving this and I think the FCC is fully justified in riding them.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Dec 2005 @ 3:04am

Re: 911 breaks, nothing new
Not Charter Cable. Once you get voip phone installed from them you have like 30 days to register with e911 or Charter disconnects your phone service.
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bob, 23 Dec 2005 @ 9:40am

Comcast is ok
Comcast included e911 registration with the install package. We didn't have to do a thing.
Wether it works or not is another question entirely.
Hopefully I'll never find out either way.
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