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May 29, 2004

June 15: New York City Council hearing on VoIP and E911

This week I was invited to testify at the June 15th New York City Council hearing on VoIP and E911.

The hearing is entitled "Oversight: Delivering e911 Service Over Internet Telephony."

My hope is that by the time the hearing is completed, those who pulled together the event will realize that the title should have been: "Oversight: Delivering e911 service using IP Communications."

The term "Internet Telephony" is very limiting when compared to "IP Communications."

In any event, I appreciate the invitation and I'm looking forward to being a part of the meeting that will be taking place in City Hall.

Posted by jeff on May 29, 2004 08:56 AM | Permalink

Additional resources: #140conf events | Watch the Jeff Pulver Show | Jeff's Qik Videos

Comments

I wonder if E911oVoIP as a "point solution" is missing a bigger opportunity; location-aware applications (not to be confused with today's "presence" features and applications). I also wonder if this narrow focus is causing E911 progress to get mired in a non-viable (or at least a low-yield) value proposition.

While the only location-aware application delivered by today's PSTN is E911, IP is a much more powerful and flexible environment, and many more high-value applications are feasible. Imagine all of the cool things a network could help you do if it knew where you were (I'm working with a start-up that's getting ready to announce, and we've got a list of ideas from office moves to defense/security applications).

The value produced by today's E911 application is 'liability avoidance": hard to charge for, and hard for providers to get excited about investing in (until regulations MAKE them). "Location application servers" can offer a large number of revenue-generating services, and even better, services that traditional service providors can't copy. Thus, application-awareness could (if implemented properly) become a point of positive differention for VoIP services. E911 could piggy-back, but wouldn't need to carry the entire economic burden on its own.

Thoughts? Comments?

Posted by: Mark Boundy at June 3, 2004 04:30 PM