mobloc8

Another article on the controversial Vonage VoIP 911 service, and the Texas attorney general’s lawsuit against them.

A sticking point seems to be the fact that Vonage requires manual activation of the 911 service, where the consumer needs to ring up and specify the address at which the phone is installed so that emergency calls can be routed to the correct PSAP.

Some are suggesting that Vonage should collect the customer’s address when the VoIP service is first ordered, and activate the 911 service before shipping the equipment. But Vonage counters that they never really know what address the equipment will be installed at. In fact, one of the benefits of Vonage’s VoIP service is that the customer can move the phone to wherever they have broadband access. When that happens, the customer is supposed to ring up and have their 911 address updated.

The software to map the subscriber’s physical address to the nearest PSAP is provided by Intrado.

It’ll be interesting to see where this case ends up. The cynic in me thinks that the incumbent phone companies will leverage the E911 issue to stall the rollout of VoIP and protect their lucrative voice business, or force VoIP providers to pay them to access 911 services. What do you think?

Source.

From TelecomWeb.

Tier 3 carriers SureWest Wireless and Immix Wireless have decided to use Intrado’s hosted services instead of installing and running their own E911 solution.

This is probably a sensible thing for smaller carriers to do. The cost of installing and maintaining an E911 solution is significant, and with technologies continuing to evolve they could expect even more capital expenditure in the future. Better to let the experts worry about that stuff and stick to core business.