Vonage 911 - My house is on Fire! Please hold...
According to Consumer Affairs, a Minnesota homeowner claims that Vonage put him on hold when he called 911 to report his house was on fire. Of course, it isn't really Vonage that put him on hold, but the infrastructure than handles the routing of 911 calls made via a VoIP provider is different than 911 calls from traditional PSTN lines. I'm sure the traditional carriers will be all over this one. "Stay with us and get REAL 911." or "Stay with us and choose our inexpensive $39.99/month unlimited VoIP plan and you can be guaranteed true 911 service". $40 inexpensive? My ass... Guess you get what you pay for. Still, I'd rather have my cheapo VoIP service and take my chances on 911 since I hate being raped by the telcos. Though maybe in a month when my first baby is born I'll feel differently. Wish they'd resolve the 911 issue once and for all!
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Dave Coustan :
March 24, 2006 3:18 PMThe Consumer Affairs story seems to be saying that all VoIP 911 calls are handled only through IP networks, which isn't the case. And it's hard to tell by the story whether the customer was using E911 or basic 911 over VoIP. I just wrote over on Earthling about the difference.
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WayWalker :
March 24, 2006 9:41 AM
You don't have to get phone service to be able to dial 911. Much like with cell phones, any phone line, whether you are paying for service or not, can dial 911. So the solution it seems to me is to not disconnect the land phone line and keep a phone plugged into it incase there is an emergency. The only disadvantage here is that it makes implementing a whole-house voip solution a bit more difficult. If you're lucky, you have two lines into your place and you're fine. Otherwise, my solution is to have a set of wireless phones which operate off of one single base station, so I don't have to connect connect to my TID instead of wiring the house to be able to use the jacks.