>> wrote
>>
>>
>>>What happens if a Vonage subscriber needs assistance?
>>>
>>>
>> Is this the same person who has been a long-time contributor to the
>> Digest?? If so, have you had a head injury recently ?? ;-)
>
> VOIP customers must do what we ALL did before the advent of 911; we
> wrote down the actual phone number of the local service agencies and
> kept it near the phone. That worked pretty well for about
> ........oh what, 50 years ?? And you didn't have to rely on somebody
> else to pick the right agency to call for you. Ah new technology;
> often good, usually better but not perfect. Now if a VOIP customer
> needs emergency assistance during a power failure............
E-911 works with Vonage, at least here in Rhode Island. It may vary depending upon where you live, but make no mistake it is not a technical issue. Instead it is a political issue, political being corporate politics. NyNex at the time was explicitly cut OUT of the E-911 pie, their only role was to provide the trunking and the database lookup. The E-911 system itself belongs to the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. We phone subscribes pay for this system to the tune of a little less than $2 a month.
What this ultimately means is that CLEC's can tap into the same E-911 system without interference from what is now Verizon, and let me tell you that Verizon will drag its feet when it very well wants to do so.