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Texas Attorney General Sues Vonage over 911
bigtallmofo writes "Vonage VoIP customers and readers of many media reports should be aware that Vonage's support for 911 service is less than ideal. Now the Attorney General of the State of Texas is suing Vonage for failing to make clear the limitations of their 911 service. The issue was brought to the AG's attention after a 17-year old Houston girl was unable to reach police after dialing 911 when both of her parents were shot by an intruder."
I can't see Vonage losing. There is no 100 percent guarantee that 911 will
work, even with POTS lines. Intruders can cut POTS lines. Texas should sue but
the outcome should shed light on 911's reliability and at least push VoIP
providers to move forward with real E911 services. see Vonage losing. There is no 100 percent guarantee that 911 will
work, even with POTS lines. Intruders can cut POTS lines. Texas should sue but
the outcome should shed light on 911's reliability and at least push VoIP
providers to move forward with real E911 services.
Just because you are able to connect to the 911 operator, and the police dispatcher does not mean that the cops will be able to arrive on the scene in time. Believe me, I know. Criminals choose the time of their attack, and the police have to suddenly respond, that is their job, but can be an impossible combination for them to be in two places at once.
I could be wrong now, but with Vonage, you go in and list your exact location to setup 911 (and you have to change it if you move, if you want the appropriate 911). Having never had to call 911 while using it, however, I have no idea what it's like after that. Regardless, however, Vonage does know your location (if you set it up, which they tell you to do). I have no idea about any other providers.
why I don't even use even cordless phones in my home.
I will never give up that emergency landline even if it costs me more money in both installation and charges.
(I may be biased, we have needed it on two occasions in my life, both fire though)
liqbase
pitiful excuse. vonage certainly KNEW how to hook it up to dial the 911's. if nothing else they could have had a landline in each county, so it was doable.
however, what's really the point is that vonage let them believe that 911 would work perfectly - which it didn't.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Geesh. Ok, how about we face the fact that the MURDER is the problem here.
1. Your message implies "who to sue". How about sue no one?! How about the personal responsibility of knowing 911 works this way when you buy the device... I own Vonage, no secret to me that 911 worked different. Pretty clear when I installed the device. Of course, everyone who visit the house know this? No... but damn, we DID NOT go through this bullshit when Cell Phones were new.
2. Murder is bad, so everyone is going to look to blame all kinds of things. But this is stupid human behavior and what makes much of the USA suck is our lack of accepting personal responsiblity (the person doing the murder). And our TV/Media always plays a role in in, making it seem like our government's main job is to keep John Q Public from killing Jim Q Public.
3. Yha, GPS. Uh huh. Let's use technology to solve problems created by technology... instead of #1 and #2.
I feel sad for the girl... but I also accept that you can't eliminate evil from the world... and every time you try to 'contain it' you just end up push it somewhere else. There are some things worth making a stand over... but come on, just a case of personal responsibility.
It is the government's job to solve all my problems! (911) Blah.
...to get this sorted out. To my mind emergency services are a clear requirement on any phone system: Company PBX's have always had the ability to dial out in an emergency. Even most cellphones still let you call the emergency services when blocked or out of credit.
It's kind of annoying that in general, we argue against lumping VOIP in with the kind of legislation that applies to trad voice: the kind of legislation that may restrict free calls, or features or privacy or all of the above, and yet the VOIP provider blows it by not even offering a sensible baseline service.
VoIP is NOT tranditional phone service.. saying "well because I use it to talk to people.. I should have regular 911" is flawed..
That's like living on a big old country road WAY out there... and having trees fall down often.. well when one falls you have to get a tow truck in there or other large vehicle to move it.
Saying VoIP needs landline quality 911 is like saying you need/want a crain on your car so you can move those trees... after all someone's life might depend on you getting through.
Your car is not designed to move trees... likewise VoIP is *not* regular phone service, and as a result will be DIFFERENT.. (You don't see anyone sueing because they get 3 way calling for free.. do you? That's certainly not a standard for a regular phone line.).
If dialing 911 (cutting trees) is that important to you, then keep a regular land line, or cell phone (get a tow truck).... but don't expect one technology to work like another!
"If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." -
Ok, how about we face the fact that the MURDER is the problem here.
What the hell are you talking about. This has nothing to do with murder, this would be no different if the persons house burned down. This has to do with a company offering a service and mis-representing a certain key feature. Just because YOU knew what the limitations of the service was doesn't mean that they necessarily made it clear to everyone who purchased the service. Who the hell is implying that 911 is going to "keep John Q Public from killing Jim Q Public"? The rest of your blathering is just that, it has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
...is because people's lives depend on it.
Vonage, welcome to the big kids' play ground. Providing a telecommunications service is a serious business. We take our service seriously and providing anything less than continuous dialtone and emergency access service is subpar.
Everyone likes to rail against the local phone companies, but there are a few things they do quite well. The first is continuity of service, i.e. the vaunted 99.999% uptime figure. The second is emergency services. Through 100 years of history they've learned through experience, regulation, and law suits what works best to meet the needs of the public.
CLECs like to complain about the hoops they have to jump through, particularly for 911, in order to meet the local utility board's requirements for becoming a competing telecom carrier. Well now people know why. Providing a reliable public service is difficult and expensive.
If Vonage wants to provide public service and offer a substitute to a typical wireline service, they need to be held accountable and made to go through all the same rigor that a CLEC does in order to connect to the PSTN (public switched telephone network). Methods exist in every part of the country to allow for CLECs to come in and offer service. These methods include 911 interoperability. Vonage hasn't done so because it isn't required of them yet, it costs money, it takes time, and it has to be done in every local calling area in which they want to offer service. This would require them to think like a phone company and only offer service in areas where the number of clients meets the break-even point for the cost of implementing the service in that area. And that alone would blow the "internet phone company" business model.
Personally, I'm glad that people are waking up to the realization that there is no valid wireline replacement (in terms of VoIP, not wireless) and that there are certain fixed costs and processes that have to be met in order to provide a public telecom service.
Bell companies connect emergency calls to the 911 PSAPs (public service answering points). CLECs do. ILECs do. Wireless companies do. VoIP providers should be required to do so too if they are going to offer a public telecom service as a wireline replacement.
Mr. Abbott,
I find your lawsuit against Vonage to be incredibly frivolous. First, Vonage is NOT traditional telephone service. It is VoIP. VoIP is NOT regulated, nor is it required to provide 911 service. Vonage has found a way to offer 911 service to consumer by redirecting them to their PSAP, however this can only be done AFTER the consumer has told Vonage where the unit will be used (as you can take it anywhere).
Second, saying you 'want 911' on your VoIP line, is like saying you want your car to be able to move large trees from the country road you live on. It's simply not the same thing. You need a tow truck, or other large vehicle to move the trees.... Likewise, VoIP is NOT traditional land line service, and as a result some things are different. I see no one complaining about FREE 3-way calling, FREE voice mail, and FREE caller-ID... these are certainly NOT services offered by traditional land-line companies.
Are you going to sue Ford because they failed to mention that the car you are purchasing does NOT have side air bags? Are you going to sue Ford because they didn't have a sticker on the car clearly indicating you could be injured more severely in car B then in car A because it didn't have side air bags?
Mr. Abbott, the time has come for American's to take responsibility for their actions. This is clearly a case of negligence (the persons involved failed to setup their 911 service), or ignorance (persons involved failed to read the NUMEROUS warnings that Vonage gives.. even the periodical e-mails if 911 service is not activated, and the BIG RED LETTERS at the top of the dashboard page if 911 is not activated).
Further, in signing up for service, these persons agreed to the Terms of Service, which clearly state that traditional 911 is not offered, and there are limitations to VoIP 911. Additionally, it MUST BE ACTIVATED!
I am asking you, Mr. Abbott, to stop this frivolous lawsuit and move on to more important things, like educating the people of Texas about VoIP, rather then trying to stifle its growth.
Sincerely,
Matt Hoppes
How does Vonage lead them to believe it would work perfectly? From vonage's website there is a little link on the front page entitled 911 dialing. The SECOND section says:
911 Dialing Is Not Automatically Set Up for Use. You Must Pre-Activate 911 Dialing. You May Decline 911 Dialing.
Of course this is America and no one reads the documentation and just expects things to work. Did you also know if you dial 911 with your phone police won't know where you are? Some people were on a boat that started to sink and they dialed 911. They didn't know what lake they were on, what city there were in or the friend's address whom they were visiting. They drowned and died and now their families are suing the police because they couldn't help them.
Sure it would be great if we lived in a world where you could just should 911 and the police would come and save you but we don't. I also don't want to live in a world where lawnmowers need to contain warnings that basically say "don't touch the spinning blades, you could loose a hand" or "don't use this to trim your hedges dumbass" or else the manufacturers get sued. I don't want to live in a world where you have to list warnings in advertisements. My other question is would cell phone companies be required to do the same?
I mean come on, does Microsoft warn you that you might get a virus or that someone could hack into your computer? Of course not, why state the obvious. I have vonage and I certainly knew of it's 911 limitations. I also knew of the cell phone 911 limitations. (Of course the cell phone limitations are starting to change and they can usually track you to your nearest cell tower. Except not all police stations have the updated equipment)
I personally think this is a backdoor ploy by the status quo phone industry to hurt Vonage.
Let's face it, cell phones don't always have 911 access either, but NO one complains about that. That's because the status quo phone industry makes a fortune on cell phones.
Once the status quo phone industry kills off the little guys like Vonage and takes over VOIP, we won't be hearing about the so called 911 problem anymore.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I could buy that some of the emergency services (police/fire/ambulance) are only available during office hours. Not all areas have 24/7 police/fire/ambulance services.
Huh? There might not be someone in the station 24 hours a day, but I've never heard of a place that doesn't have police/fire/ambulance services 24/7. I mean, the service might involve pagers or radio tone calling (which activates a siren) or some guy going to the town square and ringing a bell really loud, but we've had 24/7 fire/ambulance services at the least for over a century.
What's sad is the John family had an accessable cell phone, but when the daughter couldn't get through via internet phone, she was paniced enough she ran next door to a neigbor's phone instead of using it.
While Vonage should certainly take steps here, there are no steps at their end that will guarentee good results in an emergency situation.
Who is John Cabal?
But you have to enable it, and tell them your location.
Lets face it, there is *NO* way that 'your VoIP phone service will work anywhere you plug it into a broadband Internet connection (including locations other than your home)' and/or 'you are not restricted to the local monopoly-phone carrier for your phone service, or even required to use their existing wiring plant' can ever be compatible with 'the phone service provider always automatically knows your location'. Anyone desiring services with the former featurs, *should* have the sense (or if they don't, it should be in big bold letters when they sign up) to realize that.
For more info (from Vonage):
http://vonage.com/features.php?feature=911
Hey, wait a minute, they do! Ok, but get this. Because it's VOIP, they don't really know where you are so they have no idea what call center to route it to. Ok, say I call 911, where would you route me to? Come on it's an emercency, where are you going to route the call? Ok, so as part of the setup, you can activate 911 dialing and include your location. Now it gets routed to the proper 911 call center.
So how is it vonage's fault that the family never provided their location to activate the 911 dialing feature?
Also cell phones route your call based on the cell tower you are using. So that system is flawed as well because I could be in one town, using a cell tower in another town so my call gets routed to the police station on the other side of said town, while I'm standing outside the police station of my own town.
But of course I guess you know all this because you helped keep the 911 computer system up .
How would you dial 911 if your telephone service is down?
I don't know about you, but I generally don't lose Internet service unless I've also lost my land line (at least not within the past 6 years). In my particular situation (and thousands of other's) my television, internet and telephone are all coming in on one RJ-6 line.
I haven't used Vonage, but if as others are saying in this thread, they give you a setup procedure for what is going to be called if you dial '911' - that certainly seems like due diligence to me.
http://windows.scares.us
The problem is that most of the time these idiots end up hurting other people - eg their kids (yes yes i know, don't let them procreate) or random passers by. When an idiot crashes their car for example, they are usually protected by their layers of fat and car impact zones, where as the person they hit is killed. When they can't call 911, its usually their kid that ends up dying, when they release toxic chemicals somewhere stupid, its everyone else that ingests them. No, you have to think carefully about each safety label you remove and each law you don't make - will it just help idiots make Darwin awards or will it affect someone else?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
That marketing implies a form, fit, and function replacement. If for example the service was incapable of making international calls to Nigeria, this wouldn't be such a big deal, but when human safety is at stake, this is a big deal. If they were sufficiently up front with this limitation of VOIP then they are not at fault. If however they buried this material in a 20 page contract or do not adequetly inform their customers of this major limitation then I hope they lose this suit big time.
This is why I still have a landline as my primary phone. Yes, it is expensive. Yes, it's annoying to pay that monthly bill.
I have a 2 year old daughter. I have never needed to call 911 but I DEFINATELY need to know it is accessible at a moments notice and that 911 can find me without having to worry about it. Also, when my daughter gets a little older I need to know she can dial 911 and get help, even if she doesn't know our address.
We have a landline and two cellphones. We contemplated dropping the landline and just going with the cells because it's so much cheaper -- 911 service is the primary reason we did not do so. Even cell 911 is limited and they cannot always figure out where you are located -- and what happens if you let the battery run down???
Until alternative methods of contacting emergency personnel are proven to be effective, I will stick with my landline. It's worth the extra cost.
Also, having the landline means we can give people we really don't care about (ie the plumber) our landline number and we aren't spreading our cell number around to everyone in the world.
Yes, I agree with you, 911 is very important.
However, as a Canadian Vonage user, I was prompted/told numerous times that 911 was not available to me at this time. I decided that I was willing to go with Vonage regardless of this. Yes, that's right... I was well informed of this fact, and I made a decision based on that. Presumably the same way this family signed up for Vonage, was clearly told of the limitations, and decided to sign up anyway. They could have very well decided that 911 was too important to them and kept their land line. They didn't.
We have to get past this 'Yes, I was told 10 times about this, but I was still surprised when it didn't work' mentality.
It's common sense. Nothing more.
When I was in Kindergarten, 911 wasn't in our area, so we were taught the REAL phone number to police, ambulance, fire, poison control, etc. To this day, I still have the REAL phone numbers to all these services posted on the fridge. Even the local phone book has all these number listed on like the first page or two.
911 isn't the only option to contact emergency services ya know...
IIRC, the real issue with Vonage and 911 is that they'll route a 911 call to a published number for public safety. Unfortunately, this particular number may not even be answered in off-hours - it may strictly be the 'business line.'