Posted on 03/23/2006 12:57:26 PM PST by mathprof
A Minnesota homeowner charges VoIP provider Vonage put him on hold when he called 911 to report his house was on fire. The home was a total loss.
Loren Velthamp of Chanhassen, Minnesota, said he grabbed the phone and called 911 when he realized a fire has started in his home. "I called 911 using Vonage broadband and they put us on hold," Velthamp told KSTP-TV in Minneapolis. “Unbelievable… your house is burning down, and you're put on hold by Vonage.”
Fire department officials say that by the time fire crews arrived on the scene, the fire had become a five-alarm blaze. No one was injured, but they described the dwelling as a total loss.
The incident has raised anew the question of how VoIP services, which provide telephone services over the Internet, interface with community 911 emergency services systems.
Because the calls aren't routed through the land-line telephone system's infrastructure, there has to be way to transfer into the 911 system that serves the nation's 6,200 emergency call centers. That transfer has posed numerous stumbling blocks so far, both technical and political.
As it now stands, VoIP 911 calls can be unreliable. Calls made after normal business house may be misdirected to emergency-services administrative offices, where the caller gets a recorded message. Even when the VoIP 911 call does make it to an EMS dispatcher, it sometimes lacks the information traditional phone services provide, like the caller's address and telephone number.
There could well be repercussions from the Minnesota incident at the Federal Communications Commission. Last year the FCC gave VoIP providers an ultimatum to institute by September 2005 the same kind of 911 access provided to people using landlines or cell phones.
(Excerpt) Read more at consumeraffairs.com ...
"Suicide hotline... please hold."
We all pay for the convience of 911.
If you keep the phone number of your local fire dept and know enough not to use 911 then you are eligible for VoIP usage.
If VoIP services are forced to provide 911 services then their cost advantage will disappear.
You can have it both ways!
Either you save with a VoIP company and don't use 911 --- or use ma belle and pay for 911.
Another case of "Dial 911 And Die" - though not in the usual way it's meant.
If all else fails Smoke Signals can be effective.
I just started using Vonage, and while I can hear the other party just fine, they apparently have problems hearing me. The upload seems to go out for 1 to 2 second gaps.
Good point. There has been enough news regarding how VoIP services links to local 911 systems that this should not be a surprise.
Complete BS - the cost saving of VoIP has little to do with 911 1access. It's a hurdle right-now because the traditional phone service providers and VoIP are not working together to fix this.
"If all else fails Smoke Signals can be effective."
Ha Ha
The object is to stop the house from smoking.
Just as with banks and doctor's offices, apparently you must plan your 911 emergency between 9 and 4:30 and M-F except for holidays.
First, I am a Vonage Customer and will tell you their staff probably has a paucity of Mensa Members. You do have to register your address for 9-1-1 service. And lastly, standing around on hold while the house burns down around you means you probably have bigger problems than phone service.
woo hoo... woo hooo hooo... woo hoo... wooo hooo hooo! /sarcasm
This is reminiscent of people who have nothing in their house but cordless phones. When the power fails, they can't call.
If you use cordless phones exclusively now, go to your nearest Goodwill or Salvation Army store and purchase a hard-wired telephone. It will cost you under $5. Plug it in in the living room somewhere.
That simple advice could easily save your life should a power failure accompany some other sort of life-threatening event.
Do it today!
This is why I avoid VoIP like the plague. Well, that and the bad call quality. I'd rather pay the extra $20 a month, get crystal-clear phone calls and be able to use the phone without my Internet bandwidth slowing to a crawl.
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