VoIP 911 Call May Have Been Factor in Child’s Death
The Calgary Herald is reporting that a toddler has died, and that delays in the response to a 911 call (initially made using a VoIP service) may have been a contributing factor in the child’s death. The Herald is reporting that 40 minutes passed from the time the original call was placed until emergency crews arrived. A 911 call was later placed from a neighbour’s home and emergency crews arrived within six minutes of that call.
My thoughts and condolences go out to the child’s family. What a tragic and sad event!
I will attempt to follow the story as investigators work to discover what may have gone wrong in the process. In the meantime I will not speculate on the circumstances surrounding this tragedy but I would like to make a few comments on residential VoIP based services in general.
What follows in an excerpt from an article I wrote previously on the risks associated with residential VoIP services:
Emergencies
Yes, it’s true that most VoIP
providers have E911 capabilities. However, in many instances, unlike your POTS
(Plain Old Telephone Service) service, your call does not terminate directly in
the E911 PSAP. Instead, it is directed to a call centre first, which in my
view, could potentially compromise the efficacy of the response. In addition,
as others have pointed out, unless your ATA has, or is plugged into, a backup
power supply, your VoIP service will be non-functional in a power outage. Even,
with ATA backup power, a power interruption might bring down the network
through which your VoIP service is delivered. Sure, most cable companies do
have UPS to protect their trunk and distribution amplifiers but the capacity
may be very limited which means that an extended and widespread outage will
almost certainly result in your VoIP service going down. In addition, the
reliability of the backup power is dependent on diligent maintenance, which is
a non-trivial and expensive challenge. My
In addition to the potential risks in the above excerpt, with many Internet Telephony Services, it is essential that the customer completes an address form so that the correct relationship between the assigned telephone number and the customer’s address is on record at the service provider. It should also be pointed out that with many free Internet Telephony services, that there is no mechanism for associating the origin of a 911 call with an address.
Since writing the article on the risks of residential VoIP services, I have discontinued my POTS line. However, I have done so with a full understanding of the risks.
In my view, residential VoIP providers do not provide sufficient information to consumers regarding the risks associated with depending on a VoIP service as a primary line. In fact, many of the VoIP providers promote the service in a way that would lead consumers to believe that when it comes to service reliability and E911, that their services is equivalent to POTS, which they are not.
Whether you are currently a VoIP subscriber or are considering discontinuing your POTS line and replacing it with a VoIP service, I urge you to read my article on the potential risks before you make your decision
If you need help to assess the risks, please leave a comment here and I will do my best to provide you with factual information.
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