One document matched: draft-barnes-ecrit-policy-00.xml


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="US-ASCII"?>
<!DOCTYPE rfc SYSTEM "rfc2629.dtd">
<?rfc compact="yes"?>
<?rfc strict="yes"?>
<?rfc symrefs="yes"?>
<?rfc toc="yes"?>
<?rfc tocdepth="3"?>
<rfc category="info" docName="draft-barnes-ecrit-policy-00" ipr="trust200902">
  <front>
    <title abbrev="Policy Considerations for ES">Policy Considerations for
    Emergency Calling using Voice over IP</title>

    <author fullname="Richard Barnes" initials="R.L." surname="Barnes">
      <organization>BBN Technologies</organization>

      <address>
        <postal>
          <street>9861 Broken Land Parkway</street>

          <city>Columbia</city>

          <region>MD</region>

          <code>21046</code>

          <country>USA</country>
        </postal>

        <phone>+1 410 290 6169</phone>

        <email>rbarnes@bbn.com</email>
      </address>
    </author>

    <author fullname="Bernard Aboba" initials="B." surname="Aboba">
      <organization>Microsoft Corporation</organization>

      <address>
        <postal>
          <street>One Microsoft Way</street>

          <city>Redmond</city>

          <region>WA</region>

          <code>98052</code>

          <country>US</country>
        </postal>

        <email>bernarda@microsoft.com</email>
      </address>
    </author>

    <author fullname="Jon Peterson" initials="J." surname="Peterson">
      <organization abbrev="NeuStar, Inc.">NeuStar, Inc.</organization>

      <address>
        <postal>
          <street>1800 Sutter St Suite 570</street>

          <city>Concord</city>

          <region>CA</region>

          <code>94520</code>

          <country>US</country>
        </postal>

        <email>jon.peterson@neustar.biz</email>
      </address>
    </author>

    <author fullname="Hannes Tschofenig" initials="H." surname="Tschofenig">
      <organization>Nokia Siemens Networks</organization>

      <address>
        <postal>
          <street>Linnoitustie 6</street>

          <city>Espoo</city>

          <code>02600</code>

          <country>Finland</country>
        </postal>

        <phone>+358 (50) 4871445</phone>

        <email>Hannes.Tschofenig@gmx.net</email>

        <uri>http://www.tschofenig.priv.at</uri>
      </address>
    </author>

    <date month="October" year="2010" />

    <area>Applications</area>

    <abstract>
      <t>The provision of emergency calling services (e.g., 911, 112) has been
      a critical component in the regulation of telecommunications networks.
      The technical architectures used by modern Voice-over-IP (VoIP) systems
      mean that if telecommunications regulators wish to extend emergency
      calling requirements to VoIP, it will likely be necessary to reconsider
      the ways in which such requirements are applied, both in terms of what
      specific mandates are imposed and which entities are subject to them.
      This document dicusses the fundamental technical requirements for
      emergency services, how these requirements can be met within the
      framework of VoIP, and how these solutions approaches create
      possibilities and limitations for regulatory involvement. </t>
    </abstract>
  </front>

  <middle>
    <!-- ********************************************************** -->

    <section anchor="intro" title="Introduction">
      <t>For several decades, emergency calling has been a critical function
      of telecommunications networks. Starting in the 1960s, capabilities were
      created in many places around the world to allow any user of a telephone
      to reach emergency services simply by dialing a short string of digits
      (e.g., 9-1-1 in the US or 1-1-2 in Europe). Different countries have
      implemented these functions in their own ways, but basic emergency
      calling services are available throughout most of the world today.
      Particuarly the introduction of automatic caller location, essentially
      for quickly and accurately dispatching first responders, was a painful
      and long process that is still ongoing in different parts of the world,
      particularly when considering location information with better
      accuracy.</t>

      <t>At the same time, an ever increasing amount of the voice traffic in
      the world is being carried via Voice-over-IP services. Just as with
      other services, the transition to VoIP entails a transition from a
      circuit-based model of calling to a packet-based one. Instead of a call
      having a dedicated channel over which signals are transmitted, in VoIP,
      voice signals are divided into small packets and sent through the
      Internet (with each packet traveling independently). From the underlying
      network point of view a VoIP call appears like any other application
      running over the Internet, rather than a core function of the network.
      As we will discuss in more detail below, the fact that VoIP is an
      application makes it siginificantly more flexible than existing PSTN
      communications facilities, but by the same token, VoIP systems cannot
      take advantage of certain fixed properties of the PSTN, making it much
      more of a challenge to implement emergency services. </t>

      <t>So the situation is challenging: On the one hand, PSTN systems around
      the world are being transitioned over to VoIP systems, but on the other
      hand, the structure of VoIP systems makes them incompatible with the way
      emergency services are provided today. In their attempt to enhance voice
      over IP with emergency services the technical community has designed a
      system for enabling VoIP emergency calling. Different organizations
      considered different deployment approaches known as the ECRIT
      architecture. Even though the required technologies have already been
      defined the successful deployment of VoIP emergency services will
      require sharing of responsibilities by multiple players in the Internet
      ecosystem. There is thus a need to re-think emergency calling regulation
      to take into account the structural differences between VoIP and
      traditional voice services and to consider the re-align of
      responsibilities in this multi-stakeholder eco-system.</t>

      <t>In this document, we review some fundamental properties of emergency
      calling systems and VoIP systems, and discuss how these two concepts
      come into conflict. We then present approaches for resolving these
      conflicts, and some thoughts on the role that telecommunications
      regulation and policy can play in fostering the deployment of VoIP
      emergency services.</t>
    </section>

    <!-- ********************************************************** -->

    <section title="Fundamental Assumptions">
      <t>The basic goal of an emergency calling service is to connect the
      caller with an emergency response center that can help with his
      emergency situation. (These response centers are traditionally known as
      Public Safety Answering Points, or PSAPs.) A responder's ability to help
      is typically limited to a certain geographical region for a specific
      service (such as police, fire, ambulance), either because of legal
      constraints (e.g., jurisdictional boundaries), because of organization
      structure and work split or simply because of the physical constraints
      on how fast a responder can travel to the scene of an emergency. These
      structures and responsibilities change but in a much slower pace than
      technology. So emergency calling is fundamentally a question of ensuring
      that a PSAP is reached that is responsible for the geographical area the
      emergency caller is currently located iin order to dispatch first
      responders.</t>

      <t>There are thus three fundamental functional requirements for a
      successful emergency call (whether over the PSTN, VoIP, or any other
      technology):</t>

      <t><list style="numbers">
          <t>An entity routing the call must have access to information about
          the caller's location.</t>

          <t>The same call-routing entity must know where to route the
          call.</t>

          <t>The same call-routing entity must be able to forward a call to a
          PSAP.</t>
        </list></t>

      <t>The challenge in enabling emerency calling using a given
      communications system is thus to determine how each of these steps is
      accomplished within that system. In fixed-line PSTN networks, all three
      requirements were essentially met by virtue of wiring: Customer lines
      are connected to local switching centers, and switching centers
      typically cover areas that are served by a single PSAP, so any emergency
      call that arrives at a switching center can be routed to a dedicated
      line to the PSAP. (In reality, the situation is somewhat more complex,
      but we summarize here for simplicity.)</t>

      <t>The advent of cellular systems forced a degree of separation among
      these functions, since the caller's location was not known in advance.
      In order to provide emergency calling, cellular networks had to deploy
      specific capabilities to locate their subscribers, and upgrade switches
      that handle emergency calls so that they can query those capabilities
      and route calls based on the subsequent location. Even in this case,
      however, the routing function can be fairly static, because a particular
      cellular network only covers a specific geographic area.</t>
    </section>

    <!-- ********************************************************** -->

    <section title="VoIP Architecture">
      <t>The IP-based emergency services access architectures differentiate a
      few components that have different responsibilities for offering the
      complete end-to-end functionality. These roles are:<list style="symbols">
          <t>Internet Service Provider (ISP)</t>

          <t>Voice Service Provider (VSP), or in a more generic form
          Application Service Provider (ASP)</t>

          <t>Emergency Service Provider (that operates a PSAP) and vendors of
          equipment for those.</t>

          <t>End Device</t>
        </list></t>

      <t>Note that multiple roles be provided by a single organisation.</t>

      <t>[Editor's Note: Should we provide a short description of each of the
      roles?</t>

      <!-- We have to figure out what the role of an independent Location Server is, i.e. an entity that associates network specific information (e.g., base station identifiers) to location information without involving an ISP. -->

      <t><figure anchor="arch"
          title="Stakeholders in the Emergency Services Eco-System">
          <artwork><![CDATA[
               +--------------------+
               |                    |
               | Emergency Network  |
               | Infrastructure     |
               |                    |
               | +----------+       |
               | | PSAP     |       |
               | |          |       |
               | +----------+       |
               +------^-------------+   (d) 
                      +-----------------------------+
                                                    |
+--------------+                              +-----+--------+
|              |              ----            |     |        |
| ISP          |          ///-    -\\\        |     | VSP    |
|              |         /            \\      |     |        |
| +----------+ |        |  Distributed |      | +---+------+ |
| | LIS      | |       |   Mapping      |<--->| | Routing  | |
| |          | |       |   Database     | (b) | | Entity   | |
| +----------+ |        |              |      | +----------+ |
|    ^         |         \            //      |     ^        |
|    |         |          \\\-    -///        |     |        |
|    |         |              ----            |     |        |
+----+---------+  (b)          ^              +-----+--------+
     |   +---------------------+                    |
     |   |                       (c)                 |
     |   |   +--------------------------------------+
 (a) |   |   |                      
     v   v   v
   +-----------+
   | End       |
   | Host      |
   +-----------+
              ]]></artwork>
        </figure></t>

      <t><list style="empty">
          <t>The references to interfaces (a), (b), (c), and (d) will be used
          in <xref target="obligations"></xref>.</t>
        </list></t>

      <t>The emergency call interaction on a high level takes place as
      follows: the user enters an emergency services number (or potentially an
      emergency dial string). The end device recognises the entered sequence
      of digits as an emergency call attempt and determines whether location
      information is available locally (as part of the GPS module, for
      example). If no location information is available locally then various
      protocol extensions have been defined that allow the end host to obtain
      location information from a Location Information Server in the ISPs
      network. <!-- Additionally, independent location servers may be used as well. -->
      Then, the call setup procedure using SIP is started towards the users
      VSP/ASP. The VSP/ASP needs to make a route decision to determine where
      the call needs to be forwarded to. Often, this decision is based on a
      combination of the callers location information as well as other policy
      aspects (such as time-of-day, workload of a specific PSAP).</t>

      <t>When considering IP-access to emergency services, one should consider
      the following categories and the challenges they induce: <list
          style="hanging">
          <t hangText="Fixed Access:">From a user point of view this scenario
          is characterised by a stationary usage of a computer, such as a
          desktop PC at someones home. Typically, these devices are often not
          equipped with a GPS receiver or, because of the indoor usage, these
          do not work very well or not at all. Information about the callers
          location can therefore come from manual configuration (which may be
          useful in cases where the location of the device indeed rarely
          changes or the user is careful in keeping the reported location
          accurate) or from the ISPs network since the attachment point is
          known to the operators network infrastructure.</t>

          <t hangText="Nomadic Access:">Nomadic access is characterised in
          movement patterns that correspond to regular laptop usage where
          users switch location from time to time (e.g. go to work, use their
          laptop at the university or in a coffee shop, and at home). In this
          scenario it is not realistic to assume that users update their
          location manually due to the frequent change. The usage of GPS may
          be possible even though network operator presented location would be
          preferred since users will typically use their device indoors where
          GPS does not work well.</t>

          <t hangText="Mobile Access:">This scenario is an enhancement of the
          previously presented nomadic access with the assumption that users
          roam while having their communication ongoing. In this scenario,
          devices, such as smart phones, are often equipped with GPS receivers
          and make the location determination process more accurate. Manually
          entered location is in this scenario not possible.</t>
        </list></t>

      <t>Note: This is a simplified view on networking from the users point of
      view. As network architectures become more sophisticated the boundaries
      between these scenarios get more fuzzy. As an example, one may consider
      a traveller using a laptop with wireless LAN (as he uses at home) in a
      train connected. The network infrastructure in the train is connected
      via a cellular infrastructure to the Internet. This example blurs
      nomadic access and mobile access. Consider another example where a
      teenager uses his high-performance laptop for gaming and sometimes uses
      it at home as a replacement for the desktop PC and sometimes at some LAN
      parties to compete with other games. From software program point of view
      these cases are very hard to differentiate since in all cases the end
      device is uses WLAN technology to communicate with the network. Hence,
      it is left to the user to 'switch' between usage environments, which
      introduce problems when software developers make too restrictive
      assumptions about the environment where their devices will later be used
      or about the users awareness of the necessary configuration changes.
      Ideally, users should not need to configure their devices to prepare for
      the case of an emergency call. For the unlikely case of an emergency
      users should not be required to ever configure their device - zero
      configuration is the goal.</t>

      <t>From user-experience point of view the overall process of
      establishing an emergency call begins someone dialling an emergency dial
      string. The exact sequence of digits depends on the infrastructure the
      device is connected to. While 1-1-2 became the emergency services number
      for Europe and 9-1-1 the emergency number for the US many countries
      still provide additional emergency numbers mostly for historical
      reasons. Furthermore, many large enterprises, university, and hotels
      prefix the emergency numbers with additional digits, such as 0-112.</t>

      <t>An important part of emergency handling is in the logic of delivering
      emergency calls to the appropriate PSAP. With devices that may be used
      with different VSPs/ASPs and in cases where there is no relationship
      between the ISP and the VSP/ASP the automatic routing decision becomes
      more complex. Consider the following example where user Bob travels to
      from Sweden to Spain and wants to use their device to trigger an
      emergency real-time text interaction. Since Bob is using a real-time
      text provider in Sweden the messages are routed to the Swedish operator.
      Based on the provided location the Swedish operator notices that a PSAP
      in Spain has to be involved and, for example, initiates a conference
      bridge with Bob, a relay provider in Sweden serving as a language
      translator, and the PSAP operator in Spain. In order for the Swedish
      ASP/VSP or the Swedish PSAP to involve the appropriate Spanish PSAP
      their contact information needs to be available, and information about
      their responsibility (i.e. for which region they are responsible and
      which emergency service function they provide) needs to be
      published.</t>

      <t>A protocol, called Location to Service Translation (LoST), has been
      defined to map a location together with a symbolic representation of the
      emergency service requested to a specific PSAP contact address (PSAP
      URI). Note that the returned PSAP URI does not necessary need to be the
      contact information of the final PSAP but rather it will route the call
      closer to one.</t>

      <t>Location information is needed by emergency services for three
      reasons: routing the call to the right PSAP, dispatching first
      responders (e.g. policemen), and determining the right emergency service
      dial strings. It is clear that the location has to be automatic for the
      first and third application, but experience has shown that automated,
      highly-accurate location information is vital to dispatching as well,
      rather than relying on the caller to report his or her location to the
      call taker. This increases accuracy and avoids dispatch delays when the
      caller is unable to provide location information due to language
      barriers, lack of familiarity with his or her surroundings, stress,
      physical or mental impairment. Location information for emergency
      purposes comes in two representations: geo(detic), i.e., longitude and
      latitude, and civic, i.e., street addresses similar to postal addresses.
      Particularly for indoor location, vertical information (floors) is very
      useful. Civic locations are most useful for fixed Internet access,
      including wireless hot spots, and are often preferable for specifying
      indoor locations, while geodetic location is frequently used for cell
      phones. However, with the advent of femto, and pico cells, civic
      location is both possible and probably preferable since accurate
      geodetic information can be very hard to acquire indoors.</t>

      <t>Before location can be put into a protocol for delivery and utilised
      it first needs to be determined. Location information can be entered by
      a user ("manual configuration"), measured by the end host, can be
      delivered to the end system by some protocol or measured by a third
      party. The actual process of location determination is largely outside
      the scope of the REACH-112 project but manual configuration, GPS usage,
      and the usage of location servers is relevant. Many VoIP deployments
      allow their users to manually enter location information for later usage
      with emergency services. Typically, the users enter their home address
      into a web-based form and this data would then be used for emergency
      service call routing and also delivered to PSAP operators. This
      mechanism is primarily suitable for users utilising fixed network
      deployments (such as Cable and DSL networks) rather than cellular
      networks where the current users location changes continuously. For
      nomadic users this approach already becomes very cumbersome for end
      users. While this mechanism clearly has limitations it is still a useful
      approach in absence of other techniques. For devices like laptops and in
      particular mobile phones the usage of GPS is a promising technique that
      is able to provide highly accuracy. While it has also has limitations
      (for example when used indoor) and may need a fair amount of time to
      provide the initial location fix it is a promising technique. The
      requirements for location accuracy differ between routing and dispatch.
      For call routing, city or even county-level accuracy is often
      sufficient, depending on how large the PSAP service areas are, while
      first responders benefit greatly when they can pinpoint the caller to a
      particular building or, better yet, apartment or office for indoor
      locations, and an outdoor area of at most a few hundred meters outdoors.
      This avoids having to search multiple buildings, e.g., for medical
      emergencies.</t>

      <t>For a realiable emergency services infrastructure utilizing the
      location information provided by ISPs is important, largely for dispatch
      purposes since the accuracy is sufficiently high to allow first
      responders to locate the person in need for help.</t>

      <!-- 
      <section title="Emergency Calling in Vertically-Integrated VoIP Systems">
        <t>[[ ]]</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Additional Needs of Autonomous VoIP Systems">
        <t>[[ ]]</t>
      </section>
    </section>
-->
    </section>

    <!-- ********************************************************** -->

    <section anchor="obligations" title="Obligations">
      <t>In this section we discuss how the responsibilities for deployment
      need to be shared based on the architectural illustration from <xref
      target="arch"></xref>. Note that this narration focuses on the final
      stage of deployment and do not discuss the transition architecture, in
      which some implementation responsibilities can be re-arranged, with an
      impact on the overall functionality offered by the emergency services
      architecture. A few variations were introduced to handle the transition
      from the current system to a fully developed ECRIT architecture.</t>

      <section title="End Hosts">
        <t>An end host, through its VoIP application, has three main
        responsibilities: it has to attempt to obtain its own location,
        determine the URI of the appropriate PSAP for that location, and
        recognize when the user places an emergency call by examining the dial
        string. The end host operating system may assist in determining the
        device location. The protocol interaction for location configuration
        is indicated as interface (a) in <xref target="arch"></xref> and a
        number of location configuration protocols have been developed to
        provide this capability.</t>

        <t>A VoIP application needs to have the ability to detect the
        emergency call, to obtain (potentially only locally available)
        location information, and to make it available to the VSP during call
        setup.</t>

        <!-- <t>
As currently defined, it is assumed that PSAPs can be reached by SIP, but may support other signaling protocols, either directly or through a protocol translation gateway.  The LoST retrieval results indicate whether other signaling protocols are supported. To provide support for multi-media different types of codecs may need to be supported; details can be found in [15].
</t>-->
      </section>

      <section title="ISP">
        <t>The ISP has to make location information available to the end point
        via one or more of the location configuration protocols. In order to
        route an emergency call correctly to a PSAP, an ISP may initially
        disclose the approximate location for routing to the end point and
        more precise location information later, when emergency personnel is
        dispatched by the PSAP operator. The functionality required by the
        IETF emergency services architecture is restricted to the disclosure
        of a relatively small amount of location information, as discussed in
        <xref target="I-D.ietf-ecrit-location-hiding-req"></xref> and in <xref
        target="I-D.ietf-ecrit-rough-loc"></xref>.</t>

        <t>The ISP may also operate a (caching) LoST server to improve the
        robustness and the reliability of the architecture. This lowers the
        roundtrip time for contacting a LoST server and the caches are most
        likely to hold the mappings of the area where the emergency caller is
        currently located.</t>

        <t>In case ISPs allow Internet traffic to traverse their network the
        signaling and media protocols used for emergency calls function
        without problems. Today, there are no legal requirements to offer
        prioritization of emergency calls over IP-based networks. While the
        standardization community has developed a range of Quality of Service
        signaling protocols their (widespread) deployment still remains to
        happen.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="VSP">
        <t>SIP does not mandate that call setup requests need to traverse SIP
        proxies, i.e., SIP messages can be sent directly to the user agent.
        Thus, even for emergency services it is possible to use SIP without
        the involvement of a VSP. However, in terms of deployment, it is
        highly likely that a VSP will be used. If a caller uses a VSP, this
        VSP often forces all calls, emergency or not, to traverse an outbound
        proxy or session border controller (SBC) operated by the VSP. If some
        end devices are unable to perform a LoST lookup, VSP can provide the
        necessary functions as a back-up solution. If the VSP uses a signaling
        or media protocol that is not supported by the PSAP, it needs to
        translate the signaling or media flows.</t>

        <t>VSPs can assist the PSAP by providing identity assurance for
        emergency calls and thus helping to prosecute prank callers. However,
        the link between the subscriber information and the real-world person
        making the call is weak. In many cases, VSPs have, at best, only the
        credit card data for their customers and some of these customers may
        use gift cards or other anonymous means of payment.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="PSAP">
        <t>When emergency calling has been fully converted to Internet
        protocols, PSAPs must accept calls from any VSP, as shown in interface
        (d) of <xref target="arch"></xref>. Since calls may come from all
        sources, PSAPs must develop mechanisms to reduce the number of
        malicious calls, particularly calls containing intentionally false
        location information. Assuring the reliability of location information
        remains challenging, particularly as more and more devices are
        equipped Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receivers,
        including GPS and Galileo, allowing them to determine their own
        location. However, it may be possible in some cases to the veracity of
        the location information provided by an end-point by comparing it
        against infrastructure-provided location information, e.g., LIS
        determined location.</t>
      </section>
    </section>

    <!-- ********************************************************** -->

    <section title="Requirements">
      <t>[[ TBD: We need to add a bit of wording here in this section to your
      notes. I think that this section should also talk about the distribution
      of responsibilities among the stake holders and motivate why they want
      to do this. Then, we have no requirement yet for multi-media emergency
      calls, which would be good to have.]]</t>

      <section title="Geolocation">
        <t>[[ -- Location -- Basic requirement: Get location information to a
        call-routing entity -- Endpoint or VoIP service -- ... but probably
        the endpoint (security reasons) -- State of the art today -- Carrier
        location functions; inaccessible to end devices -- "World in a DB"
        functions; low-fidelity -- GPS; frequently fails -- Commercial
        direction is not moving quickly away from these stovepipes -- GEOPRIV
        model provides bridges, but not much uptake -- Also provides a
        location interface for PSAPs, e.g. as NENA has defined ]]</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Call Routing">
        <t>[[ -- Call routing -- Need a pubic, open DB with a standard query
        interface -- Source of the data needs to be local emergency
        authorities => Need for local authorities to coordinate to create
        LoST DB(s) ]]</t>
      </section>

      <section title="PSAP Reachability">
        <t>[[ -- PSAP reachability -- Basic requirement: Internet
        connectivity, SIP reachability -- Gatways as a transition step --
        Security questions; ref to ESInet concepts ]]</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Regulatory Implications">
        <t>[[ -- Roles government can play -- Who can be the targets of
        regulation? -- Localized (yes): PSAPs, ISPs, vertically-integrated
        VoIP -- Non-localized (no): Application-only VoIP, application-only
        location providers -- Enabling location: -- Several networks that
        provide E911 are also ISPs -- Require them to open up ALI or
        equivalents to endpoint, PSAP access -- How to enable NG911 without
        giving away the store: rough-loc -- Encourage ISPs in general to
        enable location services for customers -- Call routing: -- Coordinate
        the development of a national LoST infrastructure -- Formalize LoST as
        a national standard call-routing interface -- Encourage ISPs to
        support LoST discovery -- PSAP reachability: -- Support PSAP upgrades
        and gateways -- Encourage VoIP vendors to integrate emergency calling
        into products -- E.g., support open-source location, LoST components
        ]]</t>
      </section>
    </section>

    <!-- ********************************************************** -->

    <section anchor="outlook" title="Outlook">
      <t>In most countries, national and sometimes regional telecommunications
      regulators have a strong influence on how emergency services are
      provided; such as who pays for them and what obligations the various
      parties have. Regulation is, however, still at an early stage: in most
      countries current requirements only demand manual update of location
      information by the VoIP user. The ability to obtain location information
      automatically is, however, crucial for reliable emergency service
      operation, and required for nomadic and mobile devices. (Nomadic devices
      remain in one place during a communication session, but are moved
      frequently from place top place. Laptops with WiFi interfaces are
      currently the most common nomadic device.)</t>

      <t>Regulators have traditionally focused on the national or, at most,
      the European level, and the international nature of the Internet poses
      new challenges. For example, mobile devices are now routinely used
      beyond their country of purchase and, unlike traditional cellular
      phones, need to support emergency calling functionality. It appears
      likely that different countries will deploy IP-based emergency services
      over different time horizons, so that a traveler may be surprised to
      find that she cannot call for emergency assistance outside their home
      country.</t>

      <t>The separation between Internet access and application providers on
      the Internet is one of the most important differences to existing
      circuit switched telephony networks. A side effect of this separation is
      the increased speed of innovation at the application layer and the
      number of new communication mechanisms is steadily increasing. Many
      emergency service organizations have recognized this trend and advocated
      for the use of new communication mechanisms, including video, real-time
      text, and instant messaging, to offer improved emergency calling support
      for citizens. Again, this requires regulators to re-think the
      distribution of responsibilities, funding and liability.</t>

      <t>Many communication systems in use today lack accountability, i.e., it
      is difficult or impossible to trace malicious activities back to the
      persons who caused it. This is not a completely new problem, as pay
      phones and prepaid cell phones have long offered mischief makers the
      opportunity to place hoax calls, but the weak user registration
      procedures, the lack of deployed end-to-end identity mechanisms, and the
      ease of providing fake location information increases the attack surface
      at PSAPs. Attackers also got more sophisticated over time and Botnets to
      generate a large volume of automated emergency calls to exhaust PSAP
      resources, including call takers and first responders, is not science
      fiction.</t>
    </section>

    <!-- ********************************************************** -->

    <section anchor="security" title="Security Considerations">
      <t>[TODO]</t>
    </section>

    <!-- ********************************************************** -->

    <section anchor="iana" title="IANA Considerations">
      <t>This document has no actions for the IANA.</t>
    </section>

    <!-- ********************************************************** -->
  </middle>

  <back>
    <references title="Informative References">
      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.2119.xml"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.I-D.ietf-ecrit-location-hiding-req.xml"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.I-D.ietf-ecrit-rough-loc.xml"?>
    </references>
  </back>
</rfc>

PAFTECH AB 2003-20262026-04-23 08:42:07