The Australian Government is urging VOIP providers in Australia to take action regarding the lack of access to the triple zero (000) number, which is the country’s emergency number. Although there are a few VOIP providers that do provide access to the emergency call number, more than forty (40) Australian VOIP providers do not. These providers were formally contacted by The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) and the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA) and were asked regarding their views about the problem, the solutions that they think are feasible, and when it is they plan to implement the solutions.

The trouble with being able to access the emergency services is that the caller’s location information is needed in order for a call to go through. VOIP connections of the forty providers have technical problems regarding calling line identification, which means that the location information is not relayed resulting in dropped calls. This is what they must find a solution to.

Aside from asking VOIP providers to find a means to solve the problem, ACMA and DCITA also asked the providers to raise the level of awareness among their customers regarding the problem. Right now many customers have a really low level of awareness regarding the types of services that the VOIP providers give them and not. This means the most take it for granted that they will be able to call for help during emergencies by dialing 000, when in fact they cannot. According to ACMA president Chris Chapman,”We expect a commitment from providers to undertake a range of proposed consumer awareness raising measures.” The awareness raising measures are, of course, just band aids while the real solution hasn’t been found.

The problem with access to emergency numbers via VOIP is, however, not unique to Australia. A few months ago (July 2007) UK VOIP providers were given notice by the telecoms regulator Ofcom that they MUST provide access to the 999 emergency number after finding out that as much as 78% of VOIP users cannot reach emergency services after dialing 999. According to Ofcom’s proposal only a handful of VOIP providers, like BT and Vonage, are known to give access to the 999 emergency number.

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