Terence, Thank you for sharing your thoughts on our judicial system. I am glad you are there and I am here. <<(i'm not under jurisdiction of a ridiculous judicial system)>>
Anyway, I work in the 911 arena and in the US many states mandate that you have E911 (identify the persons location and call back number to the PSAP) depending on how much space your facility covers. Imagine a company that is in a multi-building campus or multi-floor high rise environment and an employee dials 911 and all the police get is the trunk number at the police station. Imagine if he then faints and cannot tell the PSAP where he is. In classic PBX's the telephone stations are more static and any moves and changes are more hardwired and the changes are sent to the Telco (PS/ALI) database. In VoIP the users are much more mobile. They can pick up their Telephone (VoIP device) go somewhere else and plug into a network jack and call 911. Now imagine this person having his SIP phone in IOWA talking to the the telephone switch in New York via VPN and dialing 911. The call will go to NYPD. There is an organization called NENA that creates guidelines for 911 which most PBX vendors follow. The VoIP issue and 911 is a very big issue and no one has an absolute solution (even though some claim they do). The problem is really discovery of phone devices on the network end points(which end switch and port they are plugged into, gets worse with wireless). The 911 issue is very real for large installations. For smaller ones make sure you put an analog phone at the line coming from the CO or have a single POTS line (usually a FAX line) to use in an emergency. As far as dial tone, yes, even the big PBX's fail but they have 99.999% (at least they claim?) uptime. The cheaper PC you provide the more failures. In one company we put an enhanced 911 system and in the first week a persons life was saved because of it. Don't take 911 lightly, its to save lives not to save law suits. Thank you. Phil Menico -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Terence Parker Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2004 12:43 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] 911 and lawsuits It's just as well that here in Hong Kong employers don't have to worry about being sued by their staff tripping over their own laces ; or microwave oven manufacturers getting sued by old ladies drying off their poodle ; or supermarket owners getting sued by stupid customers who trip over their own kids. In most countries cases such as these would be thrown out the minute they are filed. Of course, these are slight exaggerations insofar as asterisk is concerned - because being able to dial 911 (or 999 as it is in this part of the world) is a much more 'genuine' problem. But nonetheless, it should be the responsibility of the implementor of such a system to ensure that there are adequate measures taken against system failure - such as UPS, or even a primitive analogue phone line somewhere in the home/office. Though I cannot possibly comment regarding 'fear of being prosecuted', simply because I have no reason to fear (i'm not under jurisdiction of a ridiculous judicial system) - I would say that it is a huge shame that a group of people all with the common goal of contributing towards free software projects such as this should even have to worry about things such as lawsuits. If there are people out there who have problems with asterisk, I suggest they just don't use it. To go as far as suing - that is just taking the piss! (sorry, can't think of equivalent non-British term). Terence > > Just curious if any of the Asterisk installers are doing anything special > > to protect themselves from a possible lawsuit caused by 911 failure > > during a Asterisk/computer crash? > > > > I realize that any traditional PBX or even a phone line can fail > > but, anything running on a computer is probably going to be less > > reliable than most PBXs. > > What do you think most PBXs are? Maybe not a x86, but it is a > computer. > > > Anybody requiring customers to acknowledge and sign any kind of > > waiver? Just the legal fees of defending yourself in a lawsuit > > could sink most Asterisk installers. _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users