The Victims' Panel
In my earlier posts this week, I was trying to understand why the FCC would issue such a potentially broad, difficult to implement, and possibly illegitimate enhanced 911 order for certain IP-enabled services.
Having watched the webcast of the Commission's open meeting of May 19, I think I get it. It's clear that the Chairman and at least two of the other commissioners put the staff under enormous pressure to produce a draft as quickly as humanly possible (and possibly even more quickly – references to 3am were made) because he thought he had to act on an emergency basis. What a victims' panel. Unbelievable.
Three couples testified. One of the couples' children had died, possibly because the mother had been unable to reach a working emergency number. One couple had been assaulted by a man with a gun and had not been able to call 911. Another had had a child pass out — and had been unable to reach an emergency operator.
This was disturbing testimony. It was very clear, though, that each of the families had thought that the service provider SAID they had 911 service. The parents of the dead child were particularly clear about this — the mother had set up a Vonage 911 service two months before her emergency happened, and had been completely panicked, frustrated, and surprised when she couldn't get through.
But this is a problem of deceptive advertising. That's the issue. If you lie to people (or at least mislead them) about whether or not you have a particular service, then you should be liable. Commissioner Abernathy seemed in particular to be focused on this labeling/advertising issue, and I think she believed that the FCC's order would immediately (as in now, not 120 days from now) require VoIP providers to make very clear what emergency services they provided and what they didn't.
(Isn't going after deceptive advertising by online services what the FTC is supposed to do? They've certainly been active in the past.)
Leaving aside for the moment who has jurisdiction over what, how do we get from a deceptive advertising problem to a broad, difficult-to-implement, and possibly-illegitimate order? I guess we get there because a child died. Many statutes and rules are passed or adopted at times of high emotion and in the middle of the night that we later come to regret.
PS: I've said in the past that SkypeOut could be covered by the FCC's order. But I'm wrong about that — unless and until SkypeOut also allows people with traditional phones to call SkypeOut subscribers, it's not covered. For the moment. The FCC is seeking comment on whether its initial order is sufficiently inclusive. The Commission is also planning to require automatic location information for all interconnected VoIP services.
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