Subject: [Ecrit] CRTC says no to mandatory implementation of Location Determination Platforms in Canada

From: Francois Menard <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2010 12:21:28 -0400

Well, looks like  the efforts of Canadian incumbent telephone companies to force their architecture for location determination platforms have failed.

Ci2 was Canadian NENA i2 whereby the telephone companies, as a the managers of the 9-1-1 infrastructure, would control databases of all public IP addresses in case 9-1-1 calls are made from Internet customers. 

I think I'll have to create a wikipedia entry for Ci2 (in the past tense).

The decision is here: 

http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2010/2010-387.htm

12.    The Commission notes that no parties indicated that Ci2 or a similar nomadic VoIP E9-1-1 service has been implemented in other countries. The Commission therefore considers that the proposed Ci2 solution is untested and that actual experience with respect to the feasibility and costs of implementing such a solution does not exist.
13.    The Commission also notes that all parties agreed that the long-term goal in the evolution of the 9-1-1 network is to migrate customers to NG9-1-1. Further, the Commission notes that Ci2 implementation is expected to take at least two years and that, similarly, the deployment of NG9-1-1 is expected in a few years. The Commission considers that future solutions based on NG9-1-1 would support nomadic VoIP service by using location-aware devices to determine a subscriber’s location, which would make it unnecessary for ASPs to implement a location-determining platform in their networks.
14.    The Commission considers that NG9-1-1 offers several benefits that will likely result in a technologically advanced solution: it is based on international standards; it introduces improved technologies for location detection; and it provides access for multiple communications devices and technologies, on both wireline and wireless networks.
15.    The Commission notes that access to nomadic VoIP services is migrating from wireline to wireless high-speed Internet access through the use of wireless devices such as cellphones. However, for technical reasons, Ci2 cannot be used to determine the location of a 9-1-1 caller when the nomadic VoIP service subscriber is using a wireless connection.
16.    In light of the above, the Commission considers that by the time Ci2 would be implemented, it is likely that it will have become outdated as a result of technological changes and market developments such as the introduction of NG9-1-1.
17.    All parties generally agreed that there are currently fewer than 200,000 nomadic VoIP service subscribers in Canada and that the expected demand for this service has not materialized, despite previous projections that there would be millions of subscribers.

We can now focus our energy on Next-Generation 9-1-1 in Canada.

What a scare this was.  It took from September 2006, until June 2010, for the CRTC to reach the conclusions it did.

And its also scary to remember that Canada proceeded to forbearing from regulating local telephone services rates on the basis that nomadic VoIP would be huge.

The CRTC says that there is in 2010, less than 200K subs of nomadic VoIP in Canada and that therefore it is not worth it to implement a temporary solution until Next-Generation 9-1-1 is implemented.

-=Francois=-