VoIP Executives Should Push House Telecom Bill, Gordon Aide Says
VoIP carriers would benefit from passage of pending telecom legislation, because under current conditions even E- 911 compliant companies face too many obstacles to getting linked with public safety access points (PSAPs), said Dana Lichtenberg, telecom aide to Rep. Gordon (D-Tenn.). This is in part because too many in Congress think the FCC’s VoIP E- 911 order “is all that was needed,” she said. Lichtenberg, speaking at an enterprise VoIP conference held Wed. by the Information Technology Assn. of America (ITAA), said Gordon wants more resources for PSAPs, since many of the failures to meet the recent deadline were on their side. She said at least some E-911 language, alongside cable franchising issues, will be in a “stripped down” version of coming House telecom legislation. She held out hope the bill would remain bipartisan.
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VoIP providers generally adhered to the order “incredibly fast,” Lichtenberg later told us, but the FCC couldn’t provide all tools needed to make the requisite transitions. The House bill (HR-2418) would give VoIP providers the same nondiscriminatory access to 911 PSAPs as other carriers in the market at “reasonable pricing,” generally the same access rules as apply to wireless carriers. “If you don’t have guaranteed right to access, you don’t have the right to access” because the Bells control the access points, Lichtenberg said. Many PSAPs hesitate to take calls for which they might face liability, a problem even for compliant VoIP providers, so the bill provides for “Good Samaritan” liability protection equivalent to that granted any other provider in a local market. Whether a call comes from a PSTN switch or an IP switch, she said, “it’s all 911. [Taking the calls] is just critical for it to work properly.”
Lichtenberg urged the VoIP community to push for more sponsorship of the bill, because “we need more cosponsors to move this bill” through leadership. Even if the bill moves through the House, she said, it’s unclear when or whether it would meet up with its Senate counterpart (S-1063), which addresses E-911 and universal service fund issues.
Many PSAPs’ budgets keep them from getting in sync with VoIP providers in their area, Lichtenberg said. While PSAPs traditionally are overseen at the state and local level, she pointed to federal incentives in the form of upgrade grant money from the 700 MHz wireless spectrum auctions. A recently passed DTV bill calls for a $43.5 million grant fund for precisely those kinds of updates, though specifics of the appropriation haven’t been laid out. -- Ian Martinez
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The opportunities for VoIP providers in the public sector are immense, speakers on ITAA’s enterprise VoIP panels said Wed. Voice is the 2nd-fastest growing area of govt. spending, after only professional services/consulting, said Alan Balutis INPUT CEO. The Dept. of Defense is offering many of these opportunities, he said, and while VoIP has deployed slower than many had originally hoped, this has been a result of legitimate security concerns. The firm that appropriately addresses those concerns will win big contracts, he said. ----
Calling 2005 “the break point,” VON Coalition Exec. Dir. Jim Kohlenberger said IPBX sales were bigger than traditional switch sales last year. This is valuable to know because it finally puts voice applications on the “Moore’s Law” track, he said: VoIP is the option of choice from the international space station, command centers in Iraq and Afghanistan and federal scientists in remote locations like Antarctica. He urged carriers to highlight the $3-10 billion per year that (various degrees) of widespread VoIP adoption would bring the federal govt., noting how “happy everyone was” over the one- time revenue produced by the 700 MHz auctions. ----
Several panelists brushed aside doubts that VoIP networks could handle emergency situations. “If you're in an extremis situation,” said COVAD Vp-VoIP Services Jake Heinz, “the carriers can manage networks to prioritize Homeland Security… and other emergency operations.” Kohlenberger said the current PSTN fails in mass emergency events anyway; Katrina, Sept. 11, and the Senate anthrax scare all prove that, he said. Later in the day, Lichtenberg described how local switch networks were down (as were local PSAPs, her main concern), but wireless networks were up, and one Miss. congressman even got a call from some of his constituents, stuck on a roof and asking for help.