THE VOIP REVOLUTION could end with a single phone call.
No, not by a call from the CRTC deregulating the incumbent telcos, but by one dropped 9-1-1 call.
I’ve often wondered why, since the launch of VOIP, the newcomers came to market without 9-1-1 service. When Primus and Vonage and others began, buried in their marketing materials in teeny type, were notes mentioning their service can’t offer some of the basics people have come to expect, like, oh, 9-1-1.
While they’ve since moved to offer the emergency calling feature, I thought its absence was unconscionable at launch.
Personally, if I’m going to launch a phone service, the first thing I would do is make sure 9-1-1 works. As a business owner, I think contributing to a customer’s death is a very bad idea.
Since VOIP is being sold as a substitute telephone service, consumers believe it will provide all the benefits and security that the incumbent offers. This wasn’t so when the VOIP providers launched. It took the CRTC to tell all the new players that if they’re going to play in the local telephony sandbox, they better have all the same shovels and pails – full 9-1-1 capability – that Bell and Telus and the others have had for years.
People just don’t have “secondary lines” in their homes. They have a phone and if they need to make an emergency call, they’re going to do it from the nearest handset, not run downstairs to the “primary line” to do it.
The concern I still have – and that others in the industry have mentioned to me – is that 9-1-1 must work. No mistakes. Ever. On a North American scale. It must never fail. VOIP is a rapidly growing market. American MSOs are adding phone customers by the tens of thousands. A bad 9-1-1 connection could stop that growth in its tracks.
If a customer picks up their new Cable Digital VOIP phone and called 9-1-1 and it fails… and somebody dies, I don’t think I have to explain the whirlwind of negative media coverage that would stem from that –or the hay that would then be made by the incumbents on the unsafe nature of VOIP.
Just one such incident – in Wichita, in Montreal, in New York, wherever – would kill growth of the product in the short term and impact long-term growth, as well.
9-1-1 must be gotten right. For the VOIP providers, MSOs especially, not even a single mistake is affordable.
If someone dies and it’s blamed on this “new-fangled phone line”, then all the money spent on amplifiers and battery upgrades and alternate power sources will take far longer to pay back. Plus, someone would be dead, for crying out loud.
Telephony is so much different for the cable companies than providing a TV signal or Internet service. Lives are in the hands of the MSOs. If someone misses their Desperate Housewives, no one suffers. If a 9-1-1 call is dropped, someone could die.
In bad old days of cable, MSOs would think nothing of unplugging a whole neighborhood to work on their network, cutting off TV service with no advance warning, whenever they wished. Competition meant having to change to a more consumer-friendly way of operating – doing major maintenance in the middle of the night and warning people of long outages.
With phone service, even during maintenance, no matter when it’s done, the network simply can not be down. There must be a way around a problem at all times. It’s called lifeline telephony for a reason.
Think of it as a length of rope tied to a life preserver, tossed out to a customer. Cable must hit the target here.
The cable companies do seem to get this. They’ve spent millions of dollars making sure backup power works, that amplifiers are properly cascaded and that network traffic is well-managed.
However, here in Canada, cable companies face an additional task, one which they are not exactly embracing, which could lead to disaster.
Unlike in the U.S., where no one can be forced onto a cable network, the CRTC says that Canadian cable companies must provide space for third-party Internet providers (including VOIP services) on their networks. However, the regs don’t guarantee those piggy-backers quality of service. In fact, Shaw Cable charges Primus customers extra in order to guarantee QoS. So, some customers get it and some don’t.
But when you look at this through the 9-1-1 prism, the business case changes significantly. Shouldn’t providing QoS on every call on the network be a priority – and not something done only grudgingly if it’s a third-party? What’s the cost of a life?
Sure, MSOs absolutely hate sharing their network with anyone, but given that Vonage and Shaw and Primus and Cogeco are now all in the same VOIP boat, the MSOs should ensure the same QoS to anything and anyone on their network because if one VOIP provider has a 9-1-1 call affected by poor network QoS, and the results turn tragic, then the whole nascent VOIP industry will suffer, especially if blame is assigned to that begrudged MSO.
In North America, there are hundreds of millions of dollars resting on the cable operators’ abilities to properly provide 9-1-1.
That’s a lot of pressure on companies, on people, on the technology.
While it’s a very good idea for operators of any size to launch VOIP. Care must be taken to ensure the emergency portion is totally bullet-proof.
This is not another cool channel. It’s not a neat HD addition. Not just another nifty Internet upgrade.
Done carelessly, it could be a killer app.
– Greg O’Brien
