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Qwest & Cablevision Launch VoIP Service
securitas writes "Qwest announced that it will be the first RBOC to offer VoIP service to its customers, starting with Minnesota. Not to be outdone, Cablevision launched VoIP service for its '1 million high-speed Internet customers in the lucrative New York market.' Cablevision's Tom Rutledge said the company plans to take advantage of last Monday's FCC local-number portability ruling that lets customers keep their phone numbers when switching service providers. Qwest plans to challenge the local-number portability ruling. It looks like the disruptive technology hype that surrounded VoIP in the late-1990s is about to see its first real litmus test."
Vonage and most of the other consumer-oriented VoIP providers offer a forwarder which hopefully connects you with emergency services when you dial 911 from your handset.
You almost always have to enable the service, after you've signed up, by providing a real physical address to your house. The service provider then determines your nearest Public Safety Answering Point (called PSAPs), which is what operators used to do when you dialed "0" and said "HELP!"
This is not the typical "911 Center" that most people would think it is, and they don't automatically have your address when you call. You'll likely have to state what type of emergency you have, wait on hold, and then provide them with your address.
Beyond all of this, Vonage, in particular, highly advises you to not depend on their 911 service. An outage on their behalf, upstream from them, of your broadband, or of your electricity would eliminate your ability to dial 911 from your Vonage service. There are many weak links in that chain, and they're smart to tell you so.
I read earlier that someone suggested picking up a wireless phone that has good signal but isn't subscribed to any particular service. Cell phones almost universally will dial 911 if they can, subscribed or not. (Double-check that, though.) There again, though, remember they'll likely not have your physical address.
All that said, if you have some higher-than-average-reason to need 911 services, I'd not depend on anything but an ILEC landline. (Even CLECs tend to save money by ditching the E911 tandem, which, even though unlikely, could cause a problem.)
justen
In most areas of the US, dialing 911 will connect you to a local police/fire/ambulance dispatcher. The 911 system reports your incoming phone number to the dispatch computer system, and it automatically brings up your address at the dispatcher's computer screen.
If you were to call 911, and could not stay on the line to speak to the dispatcher (perhaps you dialed while having a dizzy spell then passed out, or perhaps a criminal took the phone from you and hung up) the police will be dispatched to your home. Most every parent of a toddler has had the experience of the police coming to their door after the child has been playing with the phone.
When you are using a mobile technology, your protection is reduced. If you call 911 from a cell phone and don't stay on the line, the police have no way of determining your exact location. The probably know that you are within a few square mile area around the base station that received the call, but that is all.
Likewise, some of the VoIP carriers such as vonage can't determine your location either. You can take your vonage unit and plug it into any broadband internet connection anywhere in the world and call jsut as if you were in your house. Vonage offers a rudimentary 911 service that requires you to update your location, so that vonage can route a 911 call to the correct dispatcher.
Ah, but you have a contradiction there. The reason we pay to receive calls on mobile phones is that we don't pay for local calls. There really isn't a practical way for an end user to distinguish between the number for a landline phone and the number for a mobile phone here in the US. In fact, starting next Monday, you'll be able to port landline numbers to mobile phones (which I plan to do immediately). If I remember right, in Europe, mobile numbers all have certain prefixes, so that when you call someone, you know you will be charged extra because it's a mobile number. Here in the US, we have never really had that (some cell providers were known to use specific number blocks, like Sprint PCS and 99x numbers), and with the newest rules on porting your number, there will be absolutely no difference - what was a landline number this week could be a cell number next week.