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Public consultation on VOIP from ECC
The concept of a single emergency telephone number which would allow people to access emergency services was based on the traditional fixed-line phone networks. As a system it has worked very well but in recent years has struggled to keep up with the increasing penetration of mobile telephony.
The share of emergency calls emanating from mobile networks is growing fast and experience shows that in an emergency situation mobile callers are not usually able to indicate their precise location which can present problems to emergency responders.
Even more of an issue is the growing use of VoIP services. Users of VoIP services do not necessarily distinguish between an IP-based service and the traditional fixed-line service. They expect to use their VoIP system to make calls to the emergency services. It is a trend that has thrown the importance of caller location information into sharp focus.
The Electronic Communications Committee (ECC) within the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) recently published a draft report on this issue for consultation. ECC Report 143 on practical improvements in handling 112 emergency calls: Caller location information identifies the most relevant regulatory principles applicable to caller location requirements in the context of emergency calls and analyses the location information standards produced by ETSI for fixed, mobile and IP communications networks.
When it comes to VoIP, the report notes that efforts have been made by regulators and standards bodies to tackle the issue of how location information can be transmitted from VoIP services when an emergency call is made. It says that this issue is becoming increasingly relevant, particularly as there is an expectation that VoIP services will continue to develop and there will eventually be a complete switchover to IP-based networks.
The report identifies four different types of VoIP services which vary according to how the telephone service is offered technically.
Type 1: non PATS (Publicly Available Telephone Service) peer-to-peer services which make and receive calls over the internet only and which can only communicate with the PSAP if it has internet-type VoIP interface and users have retrieved the PSAP’s (public safety answering point) IP ID number.
Type 2: The VoIP service can make voice calls to the standard telephone network but cannot receive them. At present roughly half of European countries do not require the service provider of a Type 2 service to ensure that 112 or E112 calls can be made.
Type 3: VoIP service can receive calls from the public network but cannot make them.
Type 4: Calls can be made over the public network via the internet and can be received. Customers can be allocated an ordinary geographic number or a VoIP specific number. The Type 4service does support 112 and E112 calls. Across Europe there is some discrepancy and how this type of service is regulated depending on whether the service has been declared as PATS or not.
A number of scenarios are discussed in relation to the retrieval of location data. In some cases the procedures are relatively straightforward. So, for instance, in Voice over Broadband (VoB) from a fixed terminal, the identification of the subscriber is done in the same way as the ordinary POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) subscribers where the telephone number is used as identifier.
However, when the call is VoB from a mobile or nomadic terminal, while the identification of the subscriber is done in a similar way as for ordinary POTS subscribers, providing location data requires a pro-active approach. For instance, the mobile network – in this case the VoIP server – can provide a location based on the base station. The terminal sends the location information when it places an emergency call. The received telephone number can be used but this does depend on how updated the latest location information relating to that telephone number is. Because of this it is recommended that procedures for verifying this data, and for updates, should be established.
The report points out where the call is from a nomadic or mobile terminal, and the subscriber is roaming and not using their service provider home network, and
Indeed it identifies nomadism as the main issue to be resolved. Since address information is the key element for an effective emergency response, the ERG (European Regulators Group*) recommends that all providers guarantee the availability of information that would alert the PSAP when a subscriber’s address is not trustable, as would be the case with mobile and nomadic services.
In most European countries the location information relating to calls directed to 112 and originating from fixed line end users is found by the emergency response centre by looking up the telephone number in a database. That database contains, at the very least, the telephone number and address of all subscribers and is the database that in some countries provides the information used by directory enquiry services.
To cover nomadic use, as a first step the report says providers could inform the emergency centre when a terminal can be used nomadically which would indicate that the address data might not be reliable. A second step, which has been widely discussed, would be for the operator to enable the user to update his current location, via the web. This could then be interrogated by the emergency centre if a112call is received.
Another approach under consideration in some countries would be to make it mandatory for VoIP providers to be able to recognize if a user is not located at the address corresponding to the NTP (network termination point) as a condition to obtaining the right to use geographic numbers.
*ERG 07-56 ev2 – ERG Common Position on VOIP and ERG 09-19 –ERG Action Plan to achieve VoIP conformity with ERG Position
http://www.ero.dk/consultation
