Vonage Puts VoIP 911 Caller on Hold

kamikaze-Tech writes "It is being reported on the Vonage Forums that last month when Loren Veltkamp's Chanhassen, Minnesota home caught on fire, he immediately called 9-1-1 using Vonage. Unfortunately, Vonage put him on hold, causing a delay in the response from emergency workers. By the time fire crews arrived, the fire had become a five-alarm blaze. The house was a total loss."

Comments

Dupe "Article"

[TheComputerMutt.ca]

This "article" is a duplicate thread on the Vonage Forum. The original thread has much more information.

Re:Dupe "Article"

[W2IRT]

The term "X alarm fire" is used to describe how serious a fire is. X refers to the number of fire stations that respond to the fire. So in the story, unless 5 fire stations responded to this blaze, someone is talking out of his arse.

Actually an alarm level isn't necessarily the number of stations involved, although that's a local definition for the most part. Urban and rural definitions can vary in terminology.

In many areas, especially cities and towns, one alarm level would typically bring 3 engines, 2 ladders a chief and a rescue or something similar. Probably at least 2 & 2 plus a chief. If they roll up and see a building fully involved (heavy volume of fire), the senior officer would likely bang out a second alarm on arrival and bring in another set of apparatus similar to the first (another 3&2, officer, etc). In a city, a 5-5 is a seriously major fire; 15 to 20 engine companies, 8-10 ladder trucks, air supply units, mask service units, a bevy of chiefs and officers, probably a canteen and a handful of special-use units. In a rural setting, probably water supply units and relay pumpers if the building involved ins't near a hydrant network, mutual aid from nearby towns, etc.

For a house fire, I would be surprised to see anything more than a second or third alarm unless there were kids trapped, hazmat materials in the shed and a team of strippers running the canteen. My guess is that probably there were five pieces of apparatus* on-scene and that became a Five Alarm job by some idiot reporter not familiar with the terminology.

*The term "apparatus" is used on this side of the Atlantic to describe a fire department vehicle of some kind or another (pumper, aerial ladder, tower ladder, quint, rescue squad, etc). In the UK, they use the term appliance. The first time I heard London Fire Brigade radio traffic requesting three more appliances on a job, I swear I was prepared in my mind to hear the dispatcher reply "Sending two toasters and a blender to your location, K."

Nothing to see here

[michaelhood]

This is no different than the 911 service on PSTN (regular phone service).

I've been put on hold at least 50-60% of the time I've called.

They're understaffed.

not suprising.

[Anonymous Coward]

I live about 6 minutes away from chanhassen, and the last time I called 911 I was put on hold. I called from a cell phone not voip so I'm geussing its just the local emergency services fault.

Re:Who needs 911?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

You can usually do both- just call your local phoneco and ask for a emergency-only line that only dials 911 and 0. Also known as Basic Dial Tone Service, it will cost you someplace between $0-$12/month, depending on whether or not they force you to get local dialing with it or not, and what taxes apply. Don't forget to plug in an old fashioned WIRED phone to the line, so that you have service in case of a power outage as well.

Re:Why VoIP?

[Bacon Bits]

Irrelevant. FCC regulations require service providers to connect any 911 emergency calls. That's why you can [supposedly] connect a phone to a jack with no service and dial 911, or use a cell phone that has no account and dial 911. It is Vonage's responsibility to see that this happens each time every time. There is no burden on the consumer for this one. If Vonage doesn't like it, they can choose not to be in the telcom business in the US.

Now, some of the reports I've read do say that Vonage connected him, but that the operators put him on hold. In that case, Vonage is not to blame as they met the requirments of law.

Re:Why VoIP?

[frinkster]

Irrelevant. FCC regulations require service providers to connect any 911 emergency calls. That's why you can [supposedly] connect a phone to a jack with no service and dial 911, or use a cell phone that has no account and dial 911. It is Vonage's responsibility to see that this happens each time every time. There is no burden on the consumer for this one. If Vonage doesn't like it, they can choose not to be in the telcom business in the US.

I work in the cell phone infrastructure business. It's not really FCC regulations that make it so, it's a requirement of the various cell phone technologies.

A cell phone recognizes 911 (and the other emergency numbers used around the world) as an emergency call, picks the closest tower and requests an emergency call. It's a different process than making a normal call and bypasses nearly all of the steps involved with making a call (including such things as authentication, determining if you are allowed access, if you are roaming or local, if you should be billed, and a host of other steps). If there is no capacity, the base station will disconnect a paying call to make room. Whether you have a SIM card in the phone or even an active account is irrelevant to the whole process.

When we test new systems and major software upgrades, we attempt emergency calls first. Not really because we want to make sure they work, it's because it's a lot easier to set one up!

Something i learned about smoke and fire.

[Unknown Poltroon]

If you are ever woken up by the smell of smoke/fire in your house, you have just about three minutes to get out before you die. Basicly, the amount of smoke and gasses in the air that are enough to wake you up are jsut slightly les then it takes to kill you.

Also, a tiny fire can turn life threatening in jsut a couple of minutes. Fire is not somehitn to be fucked with.

Fire: respect it or die

[garylian]

Actually, speaking as a former firefighter, it isn't common for folks to misunderstand how dangerous a fire can be. Most folks freak completely out. They panic, and make mistakes they should know better than to do.

Small grease fires take out a whole kitched because the panicked homeowner throws water on it, instead of something like flour.

It's simple Fight or Flight syndrome. Most folks run for it (flight), but without applying a thought process to what they are doing. Those that try to deal (fight) with it aren't usually trained to deal with it properly. Sometimes even those that ARE trained get caught by something they didn't expect.

Fires are nothing to mess around with. Those that have a healthy respect for them can deal with it once they are properly trained. Those that don't, tend to die, even with training. Just check out the number of firefighters that die each year due to really dumb things like buildings falling on them.

Most firefighter deaths (that aren't due to traffic accidents or heart attacks) were completely preventable. There's usually a cover-up, for the officers in charge, all the way down to even the victim's themselves. Nobody wants to tarnish a hero's legacy, even if said "hero" had their head up their ass and was in a place they should have known better than to be, or was doing something they shouldn't have done. The public doesn't end up knowing, but most of it ends up getting caught on tape by some bystander, and then the government ends up buying the tape rights so that it doesn't get on the 11 o'clock news. Then, they show it as training video, and tell us "See, these guys are dumbfucks, and so is their commanding officer". And yet, more than half the class would still make the same mistake.