Cornered! is a blog devoted, most of the time anyway, to telecommunications: local and global issues, technology, people and trends from the perspective of someone who's been reporting, analysing and commenting on the industry since the dark ages (BC - before competition). Sometimes serious, sometimes flippant, sometimes frivolous. Controversial, analytical, informative, amusing, but never boring; a vehicle for examinations of important issues and observations on my encounters and experiences in an industry where polarised views and hyperbole are the norm.
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Cornered! VoIP emergency call failure's first fatality?
Cornered! VoIP emergency call failure's first fatality? | VoIP emergency call failure's first fatality? |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Tuesday, 06 May 2008 | |
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Page 1 of 2 Related storiesAccording to the report the child's Aunt called 911 from the family VoIP phone but getting no answer after five rings sought help from a neighbour. However she then received a call from what she believed to be an emergency service operator asking if she had called. She claims to have given the correct Calgary address, and to have been told to stay on the line, but it was disconnected. The version provided by the VoIP operator Comwave is that the Luck family's call was routed to a third-party call centre in Concord, Ontario where Comwave had 10 staff members handling 911 calls across Canada. The network automatically reconnected the call after the initial failed attempt to contact 911 but the worker at the call centre had a hard time understanding the caller because of a language barrier and relied on the Mississauga address on file when dispatching the ambulance. Comwave claimed that, despite being asked to stay on the line, the caller hung up. This should provide a salutary lesson. Australia's Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is presently reviewing the entire emergency call service arrangements, largely because of VoIP. Its recently issued discussion paper goes into great detail about how the present system operates to safeguard against tragedies such as this one. CONTINUED |
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