I should be glad that companies are at least coming up with 911 solutions for VoIP, but the solutions so far, while they technically meet the criteria that the FCC put forth in its regulation show clearly how much the regulation stifles the technology itself. InstaTelecom, inc., a subsidiary of Instadial, has announced that it will provide 911 service for its customers in compliance with the FCC regulations. The drawback, however, is the same as all the other solutions: nomadic customers are left out in the cold.

The FCC regulation stated specifically that nomadic customers (those who have no fixed location) needed to be provided for with any solution, and so far, the solutions have worked to the letter of the law, so to speak. Unfortunately, the way it works is that in order to get 911 service,  you need to give your address so that the call centers know where you are. If you move to another location, you need to give 10-days advanced notice of your move so they can update your location.

In such a scenario, one of the most powerful facets of VoIP, the ability to use it from any Internet connection anywhere, is completely done away with. No longer could you do what I’ve done before — wander down to the pub with a laptop and a speakerphone — and carry on your business conference calls while relaxing in an atmosphere of your choice. No longer would you be able to connect from anywhere within a city-wide WiMax network or within a city-wide wi-fi rollout. You’d be limited in your coverage, and your mobility would essentially be only based around a semi-permanent to a permanent move.

So far ALL the solutions have this drawback — mostly out of necessity because the technology still isn’t there to provide another solution. But this is where it shows a gaping flaw in the regulation itself — the concept that, because a decision was made rather arbitrarily about what sort of things the VoIP companies should provide, without any understanding of the underlying technology, the basic technology itself suffers.

Already, the US is falling behind in adoption of VoIP and many other Internet technologies, and here is just another area where the consumer will suffer because the options are being taken away at a legislative level for the sake of having a solution for a problem which doesn’t really exist.

If there had been this sort of rigid, unyielding regulation when cell phones were first coming out, I can guarantee that the US would have never developed a cell phone market, and we’d be even further behind the rest of the world in our cell phone technology than we are today (we’re only a half decade or so behind Europe and Japan with our current cell phone tech). Now, the US is going to fall drastically behind the rest of the world in its VoIP technology, too.