Your claim above "emergency call centers do not allow..." is false; in fact, it's a key element of Vonage's public-relations effort on this issue.
*If* Vonage were willing to pay the same fees other local exchange carriers pay for 911 connectivity *in each LATA*, *then* Vonage could route 911 calls correctly. Avoiding this *cost* has been a major competitive win for Vonage all along and it is hard to not see it as a major reason, if not _the_ reason, why Vonage has fought state regulation as a local exchange carrier: by avoiding regulatory mandates like 911 service standards Vonage avoids the cost of compliance.What is truly irresponsible is to offer a "911" service that does not have the same user experience that Americans have been trained to expect from 911 for several decades. In a just world, Vonage would pay and pay indeed for their decision to make the provision of such a service part of their public-relations effort aimed at avoiding service quality regulation. This is a choice they made, not one they had forced on them; there are VoIP providers out there that did the right thing.
People's safety in emergency situations should be quite simply out of bounds for this kind of political maneuvering. Of course, it's not, but darn it, it ought to be.
Thor Lancelot Simon snipped-for-privacy@rek.tjls.com
"The inconsistency is startling, though admittedly, if consistency is to be abandoned or transcended, there is no problem." - Noam Chomsky