WASHINGTON-Internet-based telephone companies have joined cellular carriers in having difficulty meeting federal enhanced 911 requirements, prompting the Federal Communications Commission to give Voice over Internet Protocol service providers an additional 30 days to come into compliance.
The FCC, saying progress is being made on the VoIP E-911 front, set a new deadline of Sept. 28.
In June, the FCC gave VoIP service providers 120 days to provide E-911 capabilities to their subscribers and required them by July 29 to advise every subscriber of the circumstances under which VoIP E-911 service may not be available or may be limited compared with traditional E-911 service. VoIP firms also were ordered to keep a record of acknowledgement of the advisory for every subscriber.
The FCC on July 26 delayed the VoIP E-911 requirements until Aug. 30 and said it expected interconnected VoIP providers would disconnect all subscribers from whom they had not received affirmative acknowledgements.
The FCC previously proposed requiring E-911 as part of a larger set of rules on IP-enabled services, including law-enforcement access, disabilities access and universal-service obligations. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin decided to strip out E-911 and deal with that first after hearing about an incident in Houston where a couple was shot in connection with a robbery and their daughter could not get through to emergency personnel using a VoIP phone. The Texas attorney general is suing Vonage Holdings Corp. as a result of the incident for false advertising.
Meantime, CTIA and the Rural Cellular Association recently told the FCC that their members that have chosen handset solutions to meet the wireless E-911 rules will not be able to meet the Dec. 31 deadline to have 95 percent of the handsets in use on their networks be location capable. The groups asked the commission to waive the deadline.
