The National Emergency Number Assn. (NENA) blasted Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) Mon. for shifting funds from Enhanced 911 (E911) funding. NENA said Blagojevich was “putting lives at risk” to balance the budget. NENA said Blagojevich approved the 2004 Ill. budget that included a $1.3 million transfer of funds from the state’s E911 fund. NENA said Ill. has levied a 75 cents tax on each cell phone bill to help fund E911, which would give 911 operators an approximate location of a wireless caller. “The public needs to know that our state leaders are falling short of what is needed to keep up with new technologies and challenges,” said David Tuttle, pres.-Ill. NENA chapter. Members of Congress have been irked by several states that have diverted funds from E911. HR-2989, which has passed the House, and S-1250, which has passed the Senate Commerce Committee but stalled on the floor, would provide money for E911, but not to states that have diverted funding.
Congress faces a choice between acting quickly to preempt states from regulating VoIP or taking more time to tackle the Internet service in a broader rewrite of the Telecom Act, House Telecom Subcommittee members said Wed. At a hearing on VoIP, industry witnesses disagreed. The preference seemed to be what some committee members considered impossible: A more comprehensive Telecom Act rewrite done quickly. House Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce Chmn. Stearns (R-Fla.) told us after the hearing, however, that the debate is more complicated than that. “Some of them [Commerce Committee members] don’t want to do anything at all,” he said. Full Committee Chmn. Barton (R- Tex.) didn’t take a position on the best approach, but he did predict “VoIP is going to be huge. I think it’s going to make cell phone expansion look like wagon trains.” Barton told the witnesses Congress will preempt states on VoIP regulation: “There should be only one, federal set of rules that apply to VoIP.”
VoIP would be an interstate service not classified as a telecom or information service under a new bill, the Advanced Internet Communications Services Act (AICS) to be introduced by House Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce Chmn. Stearns (R- Fla.) and House Internet Caucus Co-Chmn. Boucher (D-Va.). They announced the bill Tues. on the eve of a hearing today (Wed.) on VoIP in the House Telecom Subcommittee. The bill would make VoIP solely a federal issue, and would avoid both Title I (information service) and Title II (telecom) of the Communications Act. The FCC and federal courts have wrestled with the issue of where broadband services should be classified, including with cable in Title VI. The bill, promoted by Stearns and Boucher at a Hill news conference, would extend federal jurisdiction to all IP services, including video.
A brush fire in Kihei, Oahu, Hawaii knocked out interisland phone service for most Verizon customers on Oahu about 6 hours July 4. Verizon Hawaii said service went out around 5:30 p.m. after a brush fire damaged a backbone fiber cable. The problem also affected 911 service in parts of Oahu and temporarily halted flights from Kahului Airport.
The Va. Corporation Commission adopted E911 rules that require carriers to update their E911 databases within 48 hours of being notified of changes. The new rules (Case PUC- 2003-00103) also require that local exchange carriers have staff available to help local E911 answering point administrators in dealing with system glitches that may interfere with obtaining E911 records when handling E911 calls. The rules also require that all telecom service providers warn customers about possible problems in reaching 911 using the particular service the customer buys. Carriers also must maintain residential access to E911 if they disconnect local service for nonpayment. Incumbents have until Aug. 22 to file tariff amendments to reflect the new E911 rules, and CLECs have until Sept. 21 to reflect incumbents’ changes in their own tariffs.
Telecom carriers generally supported a Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) request that the FCC not make service outage reports public because the information could help terrorists and other bad actors. DHS on June 2 told the FCC it “strongly believed” the existing practice of sharing outage information publicly should be changed: “Whatever merit this approach may have had when the outage reporting rules were first adopted, the threat environment following Sept. 11, 2001, dictates that appropriate steps be taken, consistent with law, to safeguard sensitive information like that included in the outage reports, which could jeopardize our security efforts if disclosed to inappropriate recipients.”
Gregory Rhode, E-911 Institute dir., told a VoIP forum on Capitol Hill that he “hoped” an E-911 bill in the Senate (S-1250) would soon receive floor time and that there would be efforts to get the House to take up the Senate bill, despite the fact that the House has already passed an E-911 bill. The House passed HR-2898, which included $100 million annually for E-911 deployment. The Senate version, introduced by Senate Communications Subcommittee Chmn. Burns (R-Mont.), would devote $500 million a year, but the bill has stalled since passing the Senate Commerce Committee. Rhode said letting the House take a Senate bill, should one pass, would probably be easier than going to conference on the bill. During the forum, which was sponsored by the E-911 Institute, several panelists said it was important that E-911 standards be “technologically independent” so that different providers could use different technology, so long as all provided 911 service to VoIP, wireless and other users. “We should give organizations more incentive to evolve the system,” said Raymond Paddock, Intrado vp-industry association relations. Organizations should be able to use off-the-shelf products to meet E-911 requirements, he said. Timothy Lorello, TeleCommunication Systems senior vp, said the 10-digit phone number would eventually be used as a “key” that could provide 911 operators with information such as the users medical history. He said if the 911 issue isn’t solved for VoIP, the telephony service would become a “2nd class citizen” that would require disclaimers and discourage consumer use.
About 54% of Internet users in the U.S. are unaware of VoIP, according to an Ipos-Insight study, and among those that were familiar, 56% were confused about how the service actually works. About 36% of consumers believe VoIP is used for dialing 911, according to the study. Of the respondents familiar with VoIP, 39% said it provides a reliable signal and 36% know that VoIP provides features that aren’t available with a standard phone, according to the study. Only 27% of those familiar with the service said adding a phone line would be easy. Most of the “familiar” respondents (58%) said VoIP would save them money, the study showed. Similarly in Canada, only 23% were familiar with the terms VoIP and IP Telephony, and out of those who were, only 13% fully understood the technology, compared to 52% who understood the basics, and 35% who have heard the name only, the study showed.
About 14,000 western Iowa customers of Iowa Telecom lost interexchange access for several hours last Thurs. after a state highway construction crew in Pottwattamie County severed a Qwest fiber cable that Iowa Telecom was leasing as a temporary replacement for a cable lost to flooding several weeks ago. Service was restored by Thurs. evening. The outage knocked out long distance and Internet access in 20 exchanges, along with 911 service in some of these exchanges. Local numbers still worked.
Senate Commerce Committee Chmn. McCain (R-Ariz.) said Wed. he didn’t know if the Senate could complete action this year on Sen. Sununu’s (R-N.H.) VoIP bill, but he hoped at least to mark it up in committee “to give us the opportunity to amend and debate and improve Mr. Sununu’s bill.” Speaking at the committee’s first hearing on the bill, McCain said he’s aware there are “difficult issues” associated with VoIP technology, such as universal service, public safety and CALEA, but Sununu “has introduced a very important, comprehensive piece of legislation.” McCain said he thought VoIP was a “technological breakthrough that will fundamentally change and simplify the ability of Americans to communicate,” but “since it is a breakthrough technology, there’s going to be a lot of china broken.”