Vonage complains about VoIP-blocking

Tue Feb 15 18:14:41 UTC 2005

Christopher L. Morrow wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Feb 2005, Adi Linden wrote:
> 
> 
>>>http://advancedippipeline.com/60400413
>>>
>>>The FCC is investigating -- it's not even clear if it's illegal to do
>>>that.
>>
>>How is this any different then blocking port 25 or managing the bandwidth
>>certain applications use.
> 
> 
> could be there are some 911 access issues... perhaps that's important to
> someone.

The last I checked, Vonage didn't have selective router access (that's 
fancy talk for REAL 911 access) - at least in my market.  When you dial 
911 from your Vonage phone, your call is sent to the 7-digit inbound 
number for the default PSAP.  For response time, reliability, overall 
safety, you were better off dialing 911 from your cellphone.

We have a VoIP provider living in our datacenter.  It took quite some 
doing to get their PS-ALI set up with their PSTN carrier.  Problem: 
Unless the ALI record is updated to reflect "voip phone customer 
address", when one of their customers dialed 911, the selective router 
sent the call to the closest PSAP for our datacenter and the dispatcher 
got the address of our datacenter.

VoIP is nifty.  I'm a huge fan but.... Buyer beware when it comes to 911 
access.  Dialing 911 and hearing "911 what is your emergency" isn't 
always a good enough test.  You need to verify that the ALI information 
is correct, blah blah blah.

John