VoIP REPRIEVE

Depending on what market report, forecast or analysis you read, voice over IP is gaining widespread acceptance or failing to live up to expectations. Regardless of which side of that fence you are peering over, the FCC's decision to grant a one-month reprieve on its order to terminate VoIP customers who hadn't responded to information about E911 service is a good thing. The FCC was far from proactive in deciding that E911 should be a VoIP requirement — instead it waited until the inevitable failing of a VoIP service to properly handle a 911 call to suddenly “discover” a long-known weakness of the service. When it acted, however, the commission suddenly felt a sense of urgency and imposed an unrealistic deadline on VoIP providers to rapidly educate their customers on the limitations of E911 over VoIP. The VoIP industry has taken these provisions seriously, as witnessed by the repeated communications many of their customers have received. But getting an estimated 2.5 million people to respond to anything, especially in the dead of summer, is more challenging than the FCC apparently realized. Taking the drastic step of terminating service to those customers who don't respond assumes that they are using VoIP as a cheap second line or that every VoIP customer has a cell phone handy to make emergency calls. While the one-month extension is a sensible one — it would be more sensible to seek a less drastic means of getting people's attention. After its gentle treatment of VoIP as an infant, the FCC now seems poised to throw the baby out with the bath water.