[Newsbot]

Title: Regulator blames Net phone provider in fatal 911 mix-up
Category: Business
Posted By: hurley_108
Date: 2008-07-30 11:25:03
Canadian

[hurley_108]

VOIP should be disallowed for residential use until such time as the providers can 100% guarantee that their service is as good as traditional land lines.

[klaatu62]

I've had VOIP service since 2004 and I've used the 911 facilities before also. The problem here is no different than someone that has left land lines for cell phones. The fact is that the 911 service did the minimum requirements, and that was simply wrong.

If I am an operator on a line like that and I have an emergency of that type and the line goes out, YES I dispatch, but I also call back. Why did the line disconnect?? Is there something else going on that I don't know about??

Fact is that there is a concept known as Due Dillegence, which says that someone should do the research required to ensure that the situation is as controlled as it can be. Your knowledge of a situation should reflect that research and you have covered all the bases.

Comwave might be accused of not having followed Due Dillegence because it did not verify that updated addresses were provided to all of it's contracted companies that might need them. For that matter maybe internal departments even had multiple addresses. But also, the third party response center certainly did not do it's due dilligence when it simply dispatched and moved on. In my mind, this company is the one that is at greater fault in this issue, because it was hired and received compensation for providing the service, and it did so only to minimum requirements while not making sure that their actions were effective.