Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate passed a bill dictating that all current and future VoIP providers must offer emergency 911 service to subscribers.

 

The IP-Enabled Voice Communications and Public Safety Act (S.428) empowers the Federal Communications Commission (FCC (News - Alert)) to ensure that all the VoIP providers offer 911 & E911 services, Reed Business Information said in a TWICE report.  

 

Enhanced 911, also referred to as E911, is an advanced and updated version of emergency services that automatically sends vital information like name, address and the geographical location of callers when they dial 9-1-1, the TWICE report noted. This information is sent to a dispatch center or Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP).

 

In emergencies, callers are not always able to tell operators where they are or what the problem is, hence the importance of this automatically dispatched information.

 

In 2005, the FCC made it compulsory for VoIP providers working as digital landlines to offer 911 and E911 service to their subscribers, but computer-based VoIP services like Skype (News - Alert) were not included in these provisions, the TWICE report explained. The new bill though, authorizes the FCC to make sure that all existing as well as new IP-based communication services in the future offer 911 and E911 services. The FCC does not need permission from Congress to enforce the new law.

 

The new law also ensures that there must be uniformity in the terms, conditions rates for access to the 911 network components. States are now also able to collect 911/E911 taxes from VoIP providers.

 

Bryan Martin (News - Alert), the CEO at Packet8 VoIP provider 8x8, Inc., was quoted in the TWICE report expressing his positive feedback to the FCC’s move.

 

“We are very pleased to see a VoIP E911 bill emerge from the Senate (S.428) that contains the same 911 liability protections to interconnected VoIP providers that wireline and cellular providers have enjoyed for some time,” Martin said in the report.  

 

Martin added: “Packet8 routes more than 15,000 E911 calls over its network each year and, while we have never been faced with a plaintiff lawsuit regarding the handling or outcome of an emergency call, the very nature of these calls means that, as we form a vital link in the nation's emergency communications infrastructure and technologies in the future, it is only proper that companies like ours be indemnified by law for fulfilling these emergence calling needs.”

 

VoIP provider Vonage (News - Alert) claims that 98 percent of its subscribers are E911 enabled at the moment.

 

The IP-Enabled Voice Communications and Public Safety Act (S.428) will now move to the House of Representatives, where it will be made consistent with a yet another, similar, IP communications-related bill.