No surprise here, but it’s official: the FCC has ruled that VoIP providers must offer access to E911 service within 120 days. That’s a nifty Thanksgiving present for someone.

As pointed out in the article I linked to above, “They (indie VoIP providers) were in the market space first, they have far better offerings, and much better pricing as well,” wrote TechKnow Times. “So how to kill them? Simple. Force them to have to buy a service where the traditional telephone companies can set the price. And what is one thing that the traditional phone companies still pretty much have a monopoly on? The provision of 911 service.”

The aging carriers apparently have the one thing that VoIP providers have yet to acquire, and that’s a lobby in Washington that has some measure of sway on the regulators.

I think everyone agrees that service providers need to offer their customers some sort of emergency services mechanism. But let’s not force the issue within some arbitrary, ridiculously short time frame. I’m sure we’ll see a number of companies fall by the wayside as a result of this decision. And that’s a shame.