In article , Dean M. wrote in response to AES proposal regarding VOIP and 911 service:
Apologies if I'm not making myself clear.
1) It seems likely that in the not too distant future telephone service will be almost entirely provided by (or thru) VOIP. And, there seem to be real technical difficulties -- in particular serious "caller location identification" difficulties -- associated with providing 911 service to VOIP phones.Therefore I'm trying to envision a future situation (admittedly hypothetical at this point) in which telephone service will no longer necessarily be directly linked to 911 service, and a telco connection will no longer be presumed (or legally required) to include 911 capability -- or alternatively where 911 emergency response to calls from a given location will no longer necessarily be provided or connected to emergency providers through the telephone network.
2) As a prelude to this, I'm noting that I, and many other residences and businesses, will likely in the near future obtain our telephone service and also our broadband Internet access either via a cable connection, or via a neighborhood or municipal wireless service, or via a cell phone connection, or via a fiber-to-the-premises connection, rather than via a conventional twisted-pair telephone wire to our premises.If (or rather when) that happens I, and many others, will no longer need those copper telephone wires (twisted pairs) that currently come directly from a telco central office (CO) into our homes or businesses. (Of course if our broadband Internet connection happens to be DSL we will continue to need that telephone twisted pair, though we won't need classic phone service on that wire any more, unless we're really backward and still use a modem.)
3) Nonetheless, all the current telephone twisted pairs between premises and telco COs will continue to exist, unless they're deliberately ripped out or allowed to deteriorate. And even for new homes and buildings ("greenfields construction") there's no technical reason that similar twisted pairs can't be brought into these new premises as part of the cable TV connection, or the fiber, or even just the electrical power wiring.4) So, let's think about how we might use these existing and any new copper twisted pairs, not for telephone any more, but for other "utility" purposes -- possibly including a new kind of 911 service. In fact, let's refer to these wires, beginning at that point in time, not as "telephone wires" but as "utility service wires".
5) So, here are just some off the cuff thoughts as to useful services that could be provided over these utility wires, earning income for some utility service provider in the process:a) The telco won't be able to get income any more from selling telco service over it's telephone wires -- pardon me, utility wires -- and it therefore won't need banks of telephone switches to service those wires in its CO any more. So, maybe it will sell all this infrastructure to "utility providers", or maybe it will go into the "utility" business itself.
b) One utility service could be a variant of 911 service. That is, in case of an emergency instead of dialing 911 you just push a red alarm button on a kind of intercom box in your house or office and it connects you over the utility wires to your "utility CO" (which was once your telco CO). This utility CO then connects you -- perhaps automatically -- to the 911 emergency dispatch setup in your town.
c) Or, maybe you still dial 911 on your VOIP phone -- but instead of treating this as a VOIP call, your PC connects it to the utility wires, which are still connected into your home LAN. (If you move your VOIP phone to a new location in another town, and connect it to the PC in the new location, that PC will still do the right thing for your VOIP call.)
d) Using add'l hardware and working with the utility service provider, your local gas, electric and water providers will read your meters, not by some "dial-in" call on the VOIP network, but by a hard-wired connection over the utility service wires.
e) Commercial "always on" burglar alarm and security services can be provided over the utility wires by security services that work with or are part of the utility service providers.
f) Ditto fire alarm services.
g) The emergency medical pushbutton gadget that your elderly grandma, who lives alone, wears on her wrist to call for help could communicate not over her VOIP telephone service, but over the utility service system.
And so on for lots and lots of other things. (And note that one of the featured advantages of VOIP telco service is that you can take your VOIP phone with you and get into the Internet anywhere -- but these local utility services are inherently local in character, and are much better hardwired into a *local* structure, with no need for the Internet.)
6) Bottom line: I recognize there would be lots of thorny problems (including major economic and public policy issues) in getting from the systems we have now to some new scheme like this; and very likely some downsides and practical problems that I haven't even thought of.But just maybe, at some point, the very tight connection between telephone service and 911 emergency service that we're so familiar with now could evolve so that 911 and telco were more or less completely de-linked, with both needs met in innovative and more effective new ways. I'm just trying to do some thinking about how that might happen.
So, comments welcomed ...