[VOIPSEC] e911 peculiarities

[Hannes Tschofenig]

Hi, 


> Shooting this question off as I could NOT find any information
> anywhere regarding this peculiarity. Tried FCC, other mailing
> lists, contacts @ carriers (Level3, Global, VZ, etc) yet all
> have scratched their heads on this one. (By the way, has to
> do with the American system for 911).
>
> In the PSTN system when a client's service is disconnected,

Could you describe a bit more what you mean by "disconnected"? 


> they're still usually given the ability to dial emergency
> services through their phone lines no matter what. 1) Is this
> a regulatory mandate? Secondly, has someone implemented
> something similar in a VoIP carrier scale?
>
> Say you're running a mini VoIP telephone service, you have
> say 10 clients and one doesn't pay. You place them in say a
> temporary disconnected state. Are you required to still pass
> off 911 services via VoIP if the client is a deadbeat?

Different regulatory bodies are working on their VoIP emergency services
requirements as we speak. 
You can expect that the requirements for VoIP emergency services are similar
to the onces applied with the PSTN. There are a few additional challenges
but it will take the regulator to "discover" them. 

In this specific case it is common practice today to support emergency calls
even if an authorization failure happens. The regulator rarely lists all the
cases of authorization failures (e.g., lack of credit, no roaming
relationship, etc.) exhaustively. However, there is a requirement for "free
of charge", for example in the revised version of the telecommunication
package prepared by the European Commission, and the example you mentioned
goes into this direction. 


>
> Please don't bother posting FCC's cgb/consumerfacts/voip911.html
> page. Offers little information regarding this situation.
> Which brings me to an altogether separate question... In the
> current architecture of a VoIP carrier, you'll almost always
> run into the following:
>
> Client --> VoIP device (ata, etal) --> ISP --> Carrier

I guess you mean:

User (Human) --> VoIP endpoint --> ISP --> VoIP provider --> Emergency
Services Network/PSAP

Please note that the involvement of the ISP can take different roles, such
as transport of IP packets or the ISP may also offer VoIP capabilities and
then the two entities can be combined. 

>
> What happens when the ISP portion goes awry 

Could you describe the failure a bit more precisely? 


>and a client
> can't get to 911. Obviously it's not the carriers fault,
> has any seen VoIP 911 specific issues like this come into
> play?
>

Ciao
Hannes

> Thanks in advance.
>
>
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