Call from London

As I write this, my daughter Kate is walking eight miles home from her job in central London to her flat on the outskirts.  We first heard about the despicable terrorist attack on London transport when she woke us early this morning to tell us that she and her husband are OK so we were spared the anxiety of knowing about the attack and trying to reach her.  On 9/11 there was an agonizing time before we got the email from New York daughter Kelly saying she was OK since both the landline and cell networks were crippled by overload and we couldn’t reach her.

According to CNN it has been difficult to get phone calls into and out of London.  Kate has no trouble reaching us presumably because we have a London Vonage number ($4.99/month – nothing per minute) so she makes only a local call and the Internet then carries the call to us. She can even call our London number on her mobile and give us progress reports on her hike (which I hope she’ll keep doing).  According to both CNN and our own experience, the Internet is working to, from, and within London.

During 9/11 when we were running VoIP wholesaler ITXC, we had first hand experience of how well the Internet coped with both physical destruction and an overload.  We handled unaccustomed volumes of domestic calls over our Internet connections as the traditional phone network, despite smart and heroic efforts by its operators, was temporarily brought to its knees.

The same has been true during earthquakes and other natural disasters.

So you would think that the FCC would want to find out how to make other voice networks as disaster-resistant as the Internet.  Instead the FCC ordered VoIP operators to offer the same (obsolete) E911 emergency service as traditional phone companies and made it harder for Internet services to replace less-capable and more vulnerable legacy services.  And, by the way, the FCC has been much more lenient with mobile services as far as E911 requirements than it has with VoIP systems even though mobile phones are used for a one third of 911 calls and mobile operators have had many years to get their act together. See a previous, less personal post about this.

So here’s what I think needs to happen:

1. VoIP operators need to be very specific about how well traditional E911 works and doesn’t work with their services.  No excuse for not being clear about this.  Of course, traditional phone operators perhaps should disclose how poorly traditional switching networks deal with huge overloads.
2. VoIP operators who want to sell in the US are probably best-served by complying with the FCC order despite the fact that it is misguided.
3. The FCC needs to make clear that it will land like a ton of bricks on any attempt by the traditional operators who control the E911 infrastructure today to obstruct access by VoIP operators.  So far the FCC has signaled that it might not take any action in these cases!
4. The Internet industry needs to develop an emergency location service based on IP address and packet technology and get it deployed.  I don’t think government “help” in this would be help at all.  I do think industry can and must develop an emergency response system appropriate for times of terror and disaster.  Jeff Pulver has a good post on this today.
5. I’m not sure why we need the FCC  at all anymore if they envision their role as incumbent protection and monitoring TV shows for wardrobe malfunction.  In the likely event that we continue to have an FCC, it can study how best to migrate all of our data network including voice to an IP infrastructure and make sure that it is clear that emergency services offered by traditional phone operators are vulnerable to disruption in times of mass catastrophe.

I wish I had a five point plan for dealing with terrorism itself and I wish I hadn’t blogged just this week about the recent lack of terrorist attacks on the US.  But there is no excuse for not further developing terrorist-resistant communication.  I want to be sure the call or email from Kate saying she got home safely gets through.

UPDATE: Just got the call that Kate has hiked safely home.

This post is available as a podcast.

Comments

[Anonymous]

Glad to hear your family is safe. I also heard from friends in NYC via e-mail and text messages from their Blackberries & mobile phones. Land lines were totally useless. I'm all too familiar with disasters, but of the natural kind here in Florida. Cable TV & internet were the first utilities to die most of the time, power next. Depending on where you were, phones would sometimes go out. Even underground phone lines went out as concentrators ran out of battery power and manholes were flooded. Additionally many telephone co switching stations suffered storm damage themselves and shut down. The mobile network was spotty, mainly based on how much damage the towers sustained, and then the batteries dying in the aftermath. My DSL connection mostly stayed up (with a little help of generator power), even when the phone lines on it weren't working. I didn't have VoIP then, but do now.

I'm a real fan of distributed systems rather than centralized ones myself. They're more complex to implement, but are far better for reliability. Whether it be power, phone, etc., just about everything can benefit.

[Nathan Wilcox]

I am glad that both of your daughters are safe. The standard for locating both nomadic and fixed VoIP callers and delivering their emergency calls to the correct emergecy call center is completed. The FCC is aware of this and so are most of the people who develop products in the "9-1-1 world". The unfortunate fact of the FCC order on VoIP service providers is that the FCC order does not allow enough time for the necessary network to be built in accordance with the standard (it is a NENA standard). I for one will be pushing the adoption of a 9-1-1 network in Vermont that far surpasses the capabilities of today's 9-1-1 services. And even though we are not a "target rich environment" for terrorist activites I would hope that my actions and network designs prompt other more vulnerable areas of the country/world to do the same. Fixed location information and a call back number are simply not good enough any more.

[ellen]

I am glad that that your daughter is safe. I had to think a moment about where my son was yesterday, since he travels so frequently. Will these attacks ever stop? I asked my husband not to travel to Cambridge Ma yesterday, because who knows if terrorists decide to blow up MIT or Harvard next.

This is such God- awful stuff. We do change our mode of travel everytime something like this happens. We don't take a plane to N.Y. any longer to visit the children. We were taking the train, but now I guess we will drive. We live in a suburb outside of Bostton. A few of our neighbors were on the planes that hit the WTC.

[Susan]

I'm glad she made it home safe and sound. Don't feel bad about your blog on there not being recent terrorist attacks. Just take a moment to think it through and reflect on what we are doing in Iraq. What is was like before we went in and what it is like now. Do you really think fighting there has improved our security?

[Fred]

I read your previous post and found it to be right on the mark.

We cannot provide 100% certainty, but I like you believe the enemy is better engaged on their turf, not ours. In a very selfish way, we were fortunate WWI and WWII were fought overseas - when Great Britain suffered enormous damage from the Germans.

Best wishes to your family overseas.

[Dan Hulton]

Good to hear your family is okay.