"People increasingly are choosing not to have a phone line from one of the ILECs that feed into this database..."
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VoIP and the Limits of Reverse 911
01-NOV-2007 | Digital Infrastructure Staff
infrastructure.ziffdavisenterprise.com
The Southern California fires showed some of the benefits - and the limits- of reverse 911 systems for public outreach.
If you need to call the police quickly you can call 911. It's a universal system and it's widely recognized that telecom systems need to work with it. But what if the police need to get you; and not just you, but everyone else in an area?
This is why voice broadcasting systems were invented. Such systems essentially involve a phone call with multiple recipients, as many as thousands, depending on the capacity of the calling system.
Voice broadcasting can have both public and commercial applications, and can be controversial for both. Commercial applications generally involve sales pitches and have, no doubt, greatly contributed to the popularity of the Do Not Call list. It's not too hard to think of less objectionable commercial voice broadcasting applications, such as urgent notification of a product recall.
Reverse 911 is the name used for voice broadcasting when employed by the government. Reverse 911 played a big role in governmental response to the recent wild fires in Southern California. It was used to deliver notifications of changes in the situation and to notify for evacuation.
Good Reverse 911 systems can retry in the case of busy signals or no answer. They can be configurable either to call back or leave a message in the event that an answering machine picks up. Answering machine detection is an "advanced" feature on some of these systems, so not all Reverse 911 systems do it or do it well. Good systems also can detect TDD/TTY systems (typically used by the deaf) and transmit text.
Of course, a Reverse 911 system is just a computer with telephony hardware in it. It makes outgoing calls to phone numbers in a database, and reads recorded messages, or perhaps uses text-to-speech software, on those calls.
The quality of that database is a key issue. In the case of the city of San Diego, for example, the Reverse 911 system uses a database that, as a general matter, contains only landline phone numbers. The system can call both listed and unlisted numbers.
People increasingly are choosing not to have a phone line from one of the ILECs (Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers, such as AT&T and Verizon) that feed automatically into this database, but instead are using mobile phones and Voice Over IP phone services. Numbers from these phone systems are likely not to be in the database.
San Diego has a web-based system for registering a non-ILEC telephone number with a physical address for Reverse 911 purposes . The San Diego system was purchased after the deadly 2004 fires and is made by Temecula, Calif.-based PlantCML . The company offers both server-based and hosted solutions.
Reports indicate that many VoIP users, basically those served by cable companies, received calls. Many customers of smaller, non-local companies like Vonage, didn't.
By many accounts, the San Diego system saved quite a few lives by providing urgent and fast warnings. The intelligence in such systems can help to facilitate evacuations by providing best route information on different calls based on the location of the call recipient. Likewise, the call could inform the recipient about routes to avoid due to any disasters themselves or traffic conditions. The call could also provide information on numbers to call and Internet addresses for further information.
The US telecom market is heavily regulated in some regards, but in others is freewheeling and laissez-faire. This is a hole in the system. While some libertarians and those with something to hide wouldn't want the government to know what address their phone number is at, most people would want the benefits of a Reverse 911 system.
And yet VoIP providers often don't make the registration for you. Cellular phone companies don't either.
The best option for improving the quality of the Reverse 911 database is a public information campaign to increase awareness of it.. Keeping the database accurate over time, as people move and change providers, is another challenge that may only be solved with controversial actions by the government, such as periodic test calls.
Whatever can be done to improve the database quality, and at the same time provide assurances for privacy, is a win-win situation and needs to be pursued.
Does your state or local government have Reverse 911? Have you ever been called? Let us know how it worked in the Talkback area below.
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