Vonage 911 Deadline Passed

An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo is reporting that the FCC may block any new customers wishing to sign up with Vonage. The internet phone service company has passed the Monday deadline that was given to them to provide reliable 911 service. From the article: "The company -- which has more than 1 million subscribers -- said it was capable of transmitting a call back number and location for 100 percent of its subscribers, but that it still was waiting for cooperation from competitors that control the 911 network."

Comments

Fines

[Punboy]

Shouldn't the uncooperative companies be fined/sued? After all, they were supposed to cooperate and they didn't.

Re:Fines

[suso]

That would be Unamerican

I think that depends on whether the year is mod 4.

Re:Fines

[Mundocani]

I think that would depend on whether they're truely being "uncooperative" or if Vonage is blowing smoke to cover up their own technical inadequacies.

Re:Fines

[XorNand]

From the time the FCC released the new rules, VoIP providers only had four months to provide E911 services to all of their customers. Wireless carriers (who have considerably more clout and better paid lobbyists), were given ten years to comply. Still think it's fair to start slapping fines on an industry that's barely out of the gate?

Re:Fines

[JWSmythe]

I'm a Vonage user, and have been for several months now.

    They've requested every user to provide a street address to their Vonage service.

    Unfortunately, this doesn't address the obvious problem with that. I, as a Vonage user, can plug my modem in anywhere. If I go to a friends house in another state or country, my phone numbers go with me.

    I, being technically adept, know that 911 won't work properly. I won't dial 911 from that phone.

    I like to have a phone number that isn't associated with a physical address, for various reasons. If I decide to sit down at a hotel in Moscow, and set up a VPN to make myself look like I'm in another country (say Canada), now I'll have an IP in Canada, with a phone number in America, but I'm sitting in Russia. The whole reason for doing this 911 thing isn't totally so emergency response can show up in case of emergency, while that is a nice feature. It's so the government can show up, should they have a phone number associated with someone doing something they don't like. I've noticed they've left the magic work "Terrorist" off this issue entirely.

    With POTS lines, they obviously go to an address, or somewhere very close. (cordless phone, or max wire length from that location).

    With Cell phones, E911 service reports the GPS coordinates. They are also traceable by cell towers and triangulation.

    With VoIP, at most they may get an IP, but at worst, you can make phone calls from anywhere, pretending to be anywhere else. That doesn't make the government very happy.

Re:Fines

[king-manic]

Shouldn't the uncooperative companies be fined/sued? After all, they were supposed to cooperate and they didn't.

Vonage: Hi, I want to steal all your customers from you and corrupt your business model, can you please help us enable 911 services on our phones. The government didn't say if you had to or not, please.. pretty please?