[VOIPSEC] e911 peculiarities

[J. Oquendo]

On Fri, 13 Feb 2009, ANDRE LUIZ CABRAL DUTRA wrote:

> If a company does that (911) to allow the use of this services for emergency
> calls, that is great, but in many cases it doesn?t work that way, money
> almost always comes first. - American way - Don?t pay, don?t have compare it
> with health care. Is the same problem. Everyone should have it but it
> doesn?t work that way. It will always return to the interest of few and
> politicians.

I'm tempted to talk about the Brazilian way of doing things, but not having
lived there I'd care not to have some someone echo ufts|rev to me so I'll
leave it at that.

In the "American Way" - almost every last LEC I've dealt with, all pass 911
calls through whether or not a customer's line is disconnected. Not before
I put my foot in my terminal/mouth, let me go to my provisioning department
and make sure I'm not off my rocker when I state my company is a registered
CLEC in all 50 states (yes including the non attached 2 states).

Almost ALL - and I say this after having dealt with more LEC's than I can
type, ALL that I've dealt with - always pass 911 no matter if the client
hasn't paid their bill. Mind you it's for a temporal amount of time, the
fact it, they ALL (remember I said all I've dealt with which has been quite
a few) pass through 911. I won't get into healthcare else its an entirely
different argument because frankly, that's what medicaid is for (non working,
etc.) whatever, separate discussion.

> Also, there is another issue, how would you handle an emergency call if your
> VoIP service runs through a Cable TV system and the CMTS is down? I don?t
> recall the last time I had to complain with my PSTN company to fix a problem
> and don?t remember any one that might have had to do it, but with voip
> companies, well, it?s a hole different story. It happens much more often. In
> some countries, companies have been forbideen to provide the service in some
> regional places by law.

Apples and oranges here. I'm talking about customers that are in a hiatus mode
of being disconnected however since you brought it up, been there and done
that (what if the ISP goes down).

> 
> You might be mad for the charges related to PSTNs, but the service is always
> available, so it?s reliable - Voip is? If you have complete control of all
> your network and infra-structure, it might be, but then it would be a
> "enterprise" service or a public one with limited scope.

I believe you fail to understand the core issue here, so take two.

Client (always connected) --> VOIP (my company) --> 911

If they're services with US (I don't care about their provider) - if their
service with us is interrupted due to say non payment, am I required legally
to pass emergency services to them.

Now on the former answer - where the PDF was posted (too lazy to find it) - the
wording is very broad. My inference from it is "Tell your clients in plain
engrish (snicker) the way e911 works" more or less. So my interpretation from
all I've read from the powers that be in the United States is: "Put it on
paper, make it understandable, cover your rear".



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J. Oquendo
SGFA, SGFE, C|EH, CNDA, CHFI, OSCP

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