Jeff Pulver, founder of Pulver Communications and Free World Dialup, has posted a rather novel Petition to the FCC. It asks for a temporary easing of restrictions covering VoIP in times of emergencies. The background of this goes to the Hurricane Katrina disaster and what happened to communications during and after.  Wireline phones ceased to be a viable method of communication, as many of the homes were underwater, lines were cut, and even cell towers were knocked out of commission by the hundreds.

The saviour for the relief organisations, the government workers, and the refugees was VoIP. Companies came in and created a wireless VoIP network for people to use in order to maintain communications, allowing refugees to maintain contact with their loved ones and even gave them free voicemail to get urgent messages.  The wireline providers, however, did no such thing, and were proven to be a disasterous single point of failure.

The FCC, however, has severley hamstringed VoIP providers with regulations disallowing numerous things such as porting a phone number to an area outside its original geographical location, easily interconnecting with the PSTN (traditional phone network), and has even cited safety concerns as their reason for limiting to whom VoIP can even market. Many of these regulations have been politically mandated, with the big telecom lobbyists pushing hard to get them in place.
The petition asks for these regulations to be relaxed during times of emergency to ensure that we’re no longer left in a situation where politics dictates that we must all be without  communications for the sake of not hurting the business of the telecoms who aren’t actually physically able to provide service.

It’s a good first step, really. It’s hard to deny the role that VoIP played in helping with Katrina, and it’s shameful to think that the FCC would deny an emergency provision to allow an easing of restrictrions when it’s absolutely necessary. And, of course, if they recognise that VoIP is truly essential in times of emergency, it helps negate their argument that VoIP is inherently dangerous for people to use and requires strict regulations to keep people safe.