2-29-08 Technology Week in Review
Posted on February 29, 2008 By: Mike, VoIP Facts: The Blog email author
Filed Under Commentary, Industry News, Net Neutrality
Senate Passes e911
The Senate passed the IP-Enabled Voice Communications and Public Safety Act this week that would require all VoIP service providers to offer enhanced 911 services to all of their subscribers. The bill also gives the FCC the authority to require new 911 services as they evolve, and mandates they keep an eye on next generation 911 capabilities. VoIP pure plays and Cable companies would be given the same access under the same terms as traditional providers to emergency services.
This could be good for the VoIP market, especially in the residential arena, where the perceived lack of 911 capabilities has served as a deterrent for those who might have otherwise switched.
The enhanced part of 911 is that persons dialing the number would be connected to a local operator, and contact information would be sent automatically to the call center. Most pure plays today do this today by having the subscriber sign up for 911.
Which brings up another question: How will the center know the source when the user is not dialing from their registered address? One of the great advantages of VoIP is mobility, allowing users to place calls from any location with a broadband Internet connection. Are GPS enabled devices the answer? Maybe the FCC can figure it out!
The Senates bill must first square up with the House version, which is expected, before it will be sent to the President for signing.
Comcast Blocking People Too?
In an FCC forum on traffic management at Harvard University Monday, Comcast apparently paid people off the street to take up seats in the meeting hall. The cable company was on the hotseat as the FCC looked into their practice of tampering with some p2p traffic from BitTorent to save bandwidth.
Comcast says it did pay people to hold places in line for some of their employees, but denies it paid them to take up seats at the public forum. Others disagree, saying about 100 interested citizens were denied access to the meeting, as seats were taken by people sleeping in their seats, and carrying yellow highlighters in their pockets.
The Silicon Valley website Valleywag says that the FCC will take no action on the companies DOS to the public practices, but is considering holding another hearing this time at Stanford University.
Comcast, what are you doing? You just lost pretty much any credibility you ever may have had, at least with the public. These dirty little tactics may work well in D.C., but taking them to a public open meeting on a college campus will win you no friends. You should definitely consider firing your PR guy.
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!
Popularity: 100% [?]
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Trackback URL: http://voip-facts.net/voip-blog/2-29-08-technology-week-in-review/trackback/
Comments
Leave a Reply
