As expected, the FCC has ordered VoIP carriers that interconnect with the traditional telephone service to implement enhanced 911 capability within 120 days.

Read the press release: Commission Requires Interconnected VoIP Providers to Provide Enhanced 911 Service [PDF].

Here's an interesting quote:

[This order] does not place obligations on other IP-based service providers, such as those that provide instant messaging or Internet gaming services, because although these services may contain a voice component, customers of these services cannot receive calls from and place calls to the PSTN.

And, now they're definitely not going to, even though one would expect such convenient technology to be developed in the near future. What is it about innovation that the FCC doesn't like? And, given the statements of the commissioners that public safety is job #1, what is to prevent them from requiring such obligations in the future? If they have authority to regulate VoIP, they are claiming authority to regulate all IP-based services. Note how this quote is framed ... it is not that they can't regulate IP-based online games, it is that they chose not to.

And here is one of the scary parts:

Finally, the Commission stated its intention to adopt, in a future order, an advanced E911 solution that includes a method for determining the customer’s location without the customer having to self report this information.

IP is just bits. It doesn't care whether the bits are voice or some other form of data. If the technology will tell people where you are based on an IP datastream for voice, it will very likely be able to tell people where you are for any IP datastream. Gee, I wonder if this technology will ever be used for anything having to do with geographic censorship and privacy violations, among other things?

All four of the commissioners have issued separate statements:

Chairman Kevin Martin is all about the public safety and wishes he could order that the rules be implemented immediately (Statement of Chairman Kevin J. Martin).

Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy statement wasn't closely proof read as it repeats several paragraphs verbatim (Press Statement of Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy [PDF]).

Commissioner Michael Copps shows his frustration with, you know, the law (Separate Statement of Commissioner Michael Copps [PDF]):

For far too many years now, the Commission has engaged in all sorts of term-parsing and linguistic exegesis as if just finding the right descriptor for new technologies would magically create a policy framework for them. Yet here we are today still trying to determine if those who provide new calling technologies need also to provide up-to-date emergency calling and location capabilities to those who use their services. The sad fact is that we have spent so much time splitting hairs about what is a telecommunications service and what is an information service that we have endangered public safety. At some point the semantic debates must end and reality must assert itself—when customers sign up for a telephone they expect it to deliver like a telephone. When an intruder is in the house and the homeowner goes to the phone to call the police, that’s a call that just has to go through.

Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein's statement is a little more detailed and worth reading for a better understanding of what the order is trying to achieve (Statement of Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein [PDF]).

More later, but be sure to read Prof. Susan Crawford's take when the reports that this would happen started yesterday (911 and VoIP):

This is crazy. It's not even clear what the Commission thinks its source of jurisdiction is. Non common-carrier VoIP service providers surely don't fit under Title II. And the DC Circuit has clearly told us that Title I isn't the ever-expanding golden purse that the FCC thought it was. So just what gives the Commission the power to do this?

Read the whole thing.