If the issue is being informed, the FCC could have addressed that simply by requiring providers to state that they do or don't offer 911 service.
I'm not sure whether by "physical address" you mean the IP address of a computer or its physical location. Getting the IP address is trivial; figuring out where that computer actually is, is an unsolvable problem in the general case. Where would the geographic information initially come from, other than people's own assertions?
Perhaps the government will eventually mandate a GPS device in every computer -- not to keep people under surveillance, of course, but just so they can find us if we call 911. Purely for our own good.
Tim
· 4 years ago
Right, by physical address I mean their street address. My idea was that the address could come from another machine on the computer's subnet. In an office environment, this would only have to set up once by the company's sysadmin and would then work for all devices on the network. In the home environment, the ISP would know the addresses of its customers, and could therefore tell devices that plugged into the network what their physical location was.
Braden
· 4 years ago
I'm going to hold true to my libertarian convictions and say I'm against this FCC order. But you don't need to be a libertarian to understand that this was a knee-jerk reaction by the FCC. I think it sets a bad precedent for future technologies, because it is of a mindset that once a service begins to establish a sizable customer base it is ripe for burdensome regulations. Such a belief ignores the reasons why such services are popular in the first place. Low cost and new features exist because the market, not government, was the driver of the new service. Instead of forcing a one-size-fits-all emergency contact system onto each new technology, let's revisit how communications providers can achieve social goals like 911 in ways that provide consumers with options and the ability to decide for themselves what is important.
Yet the FCC told consumers that they have no option but to have 911 service bundled with VoIP. 911 is an important service, but it should not be a legal prerequisite for offering new communications services. Any government action that mandates the inclusion of features from legacy networks threatens the growth of new services. The FCC, while trying to help current VoIP consumers, may be hindering the future development of new, more advanced VoIP emergency service solutions.
And the pathetic display of "victims" of VoIP not having 911...the rhetoric of the statements from each FCC Commissioner make it seem that VoIP itself caused that poor mother's child to stop breathing, or that Texas couple to be held at gunpoint. So now any smart entrepreneur that comes up with a great new way to communicate will be blamed for not offering legacy services? There are those people that look at a new technology and say "hey, that's great, look at the neat things that I can do with it at such a great price" and those that say "but it can't do that, or that, and what about this social obligation?" The market could've and should've worked this out.
dmarti
· 4 years ago
The phone could look up the LOC record for its own IP address.
All Comments
I'm not sure whether by "physical address" you mean the IP address of a computer or its physical location. Getting the IP address is trivial; figuring out where that computer actually is, is an unsolvable problem in the general case. Where would the geographic information initially come from, other than people's own assertions?
Perhaps the government will eventually mandate a GPS device in every computer -- not to keep people under surveillance, of course, but just so they can find us if we call 911. Purely for our own good.
Yet the FCC told consumers that they have no option but to have 911 service bundled with VoIP. 911 is an important service, but it should not be a legal prerequisite for offering new communications services. Any government action that mandates the inclusion of features from legacy networks threatens the growth of new services. The FCC, while trying to help current VoIP consumers, may be hindering the future development of new, more advanced VoIP emergency service solutions.
And the pathetic display of "victims" of VoIP not having 911...the rhetoric of the statements from each FCC Commissioner make it seem that VoIP itself caused that poor mother's child to stop breathing, or that Texas couple to be held at gunpoint. So now any smart entrepreneur that comes up with a great new way to communicate will be blamed for not offering legacy services? There are those people that look at a new technology and say "hey, that's great, look at the neat things that I can do with it at such a great price" and those that say "but it can't do that, or that, and what about this social obligation?" The market could've and should've worked this out.