> *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
Thanks for the clarification. That's how I remember it.