Bell Canada files 911 VoIP patent in United States, additional information sketchy

A patent filed by Bell Canada with the U.S. Patent Office this month for routing 911 emergency calls in a Voice over IP (VoIP) environment has prompted speculation that the company has solved the highly complex technical problem. Eugene Roman, Bell Canada’s chief technologist, announced the patent filing during the Evolving to the World of IP session at the GTEC Week conference in Ottawa this month. Details on the company’s applications are sketchy at this point because the company refused to grant Network Letter an interview with Roman, saying it’s too early to talk about the patent. A spokesperson explains that the patent application is for a process and that it is focused primarily on the consumer segment. "To put it into context, it’s the first part of a multiphase approach. However, since we haven’t yet launched a Voice over IP offering, at this point in time we are current in technical trials, we wouldn’t really have anything more to add in terms of what you are looking for." "Once we move out of technical trials, we’ll have the right Voice over IP offering for consumers at the right time," the spokesperson says. Emergency 911 services became a hot-button topic at the CRTC’s hearings on whether it should regulate VoIP as traditional telephony or create more relaxed rules. Many of the VoIP providers in Canada currently offer 911 services with the stipulation that broadband telephone must stay in one location and the consumer must register the address of the device with the provider. The VoIP 911 issue, however, has little to do with reliability in a fixed location, but becomes important when the user moves the "box" to another location or gets a phone number with an out-of-region area code. Under these scenarios, the possibility exists that 911 calls wouldn’t be routed to the appropriate public safety answering point. Mediatrix Telecom Inc., a Montreal provider of VoIP gateways, offers one solution that automatically routes 911 calls over the PSTN. This, says Jean-Grégoire Manoukian, Mediatrix’ product marketing manager, solves the problem, but also requires consumers to maintain a traditional landline. "You have a landline for emergency services, local calls, whereas you go with Voice over IP for long distance calls, advanced features…" he says of the company’s offering. Asked how difficult it would be to create a solution to offer 911 in a pure IP environment, Manoukian responds that that will be a question for the service providers and the soft switch manufacturers. "I’m assuming what they’ll have to do is to find a way to send the physical location from IP to PSTN," he tells NL. Bill St. Arnaud, senior director advanced networks at CANARIE Inc., explains that in a fixed location scenario it’s not difficult to offer 911. But, he adds, the reality is that it is very difficult to try and pinpoint the location of an IP voice call, so perhaps it is time to re-evaluate the need for 911 in a VoIP environment. "Is it a solvable problem? And does it need to solved in the first place?" he asks. "We’ve been living with cell phone services without 911 – they’re just starting to bring in 911 in cell phone services, and people have been quite happy with that…For consumers, it’s obviously probably a more important service, so it should be to my mind an optional service, and then you use GPS." St. Arnaud concludes that embedding a GPS encoder in the VoIP device, or the PC, will provide the exact location of the 911 call to within 10 centimetres at all times. "Make it a client device rather than try to base it on databases and other systems. Make it an option (for consumers)," he says.

Bell Canada files 911 VoIP patent in United States, additional information sketchy

News | October 28, 2004

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