Re: VOIP: 911 - Vonage vs Time-Warner Roadrunner

>> All you need to see that that's not true is the example of more
>> responsible, and less politically adept, VOIP carriers who have done >> the right thing instead of cutting corners, and who therefore *do* >> provide E911 service: Packet8, the cable companies' in-house VOIP >> telcos, and so forth. Surprise, surprise: their services cost more -- >> because being irresponsible about 911 service gives Vonage lower >> costs. But it is ridiculous to blame anyone but Vonage for the fact >> that Vonage has refused to pay the costs of traditional 911 >> interconnection and therefore does not provide actual 911 service. > You can cast the VoIP providers as the demons but in reality it's the > incumbents.

You can twist what I said if you like, but in reality the passage you quote above doesn't say what you claim it does -- after all, it says quite clearly that to see how sleazy Vonage is acting here, you need only look at the example of _other VoIP providers_ who have chosen to not act sleazy.

Pretty much every switch made for the past decade or more has been IP > aware. Hell, even my G3i has a TCP/IP address, as does my Intuity LX.

It is not clear to me what you think "being IP aware" is, or what that has to do with trunk and switch provisioning for basic or enhanced 911 service. As far as I know, every Nortel DMS ever built has had a TCP/IP stack on the control processor, but so what? That has nothing at all to do with doing packet voice over IP, and even less to do with the actual service design of E911, which is mandated by agreements between the LECs and the regulatory authorities in most states.

You'll probably try to twist my words again, so let me just be wholly plain about throwing down the gauntlet, here. Please explain

*exactly* what you th> And in case you didn't know here is how Vonage works:

They use Paetec and Focal switches to hand off to the PSTN. These are > fully featured 5ESS and the like switches, and both those carriers are > fully regulated. This is just a little side business to utilities a > glut of switching capacity.

Precisely. They don't actually use their own switches as gateways to the PSTN, because they don't want to pay for SS7-capable software loads or SS7 interconnection. The result is that the call enters the PSTN from a carrier who doesn't actually have the LIDB data required to do proper 911 service -- thus (part of) the reason for the special hacks Vonage wants all the existing 911 services to implement to accomodate Vonage.

Why should anyone but Vonage pay for Vonage's choice to cut costs by implementing their interconnection to the PSTN as if they were a giant corporate PBX? Certainly nobody forced Vonage to do it that way; but certainly they saved a pretty penny on SS7-capable software loads for their Cisco SIP gateways -- which *are* available, if you choose to pay for them -- or real gateway switches, not to mention all the those trunks they decided not to pay for that 911 service would have required.

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