19 June 2007

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) said today it is proposing changes to the Telecommunications (Emergency Call Service) Determination 2002 to confirm the obligation to provide free-of-charge access to emergency call services for two-way and dial-out only VoIP. 

Many VoIP providers already provide free-of-charge access to triple zero and these proposals clarify that the obligation applies to all VoIP services capable of dialing into the public telephone network,the agency said.

Alian CMA added it is also proposing that VoIP services must be flagged in the Integrated Public Number Database (IPND) so that the emergency call service operator will know to ask the caller for location information. Spanning all of Australia, the IPND is a national database of all listed and unlisted public telephone numbers, customer name and address information and the name of the customers carriage service provider.

The details of the proposed changes are available on the ACMA website.