More on Vonage service disruptions...

Fri Mar 4 03:25:14 UTC 2005

Perhaps it varies by state, but I thought part of the E-911 service
regulations was that if you were offering (charging) for it, you had to
offer it as "lifeline" service which meant it had to survive power outage.
*shrug*

I guess the original regs weren't written with these things in mind!  

Scott 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu] On Behalf Of John
Levine
Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2005 9:17 PM
To: nanog at nanog.org
Cc: fergdawg at netzero.net
Subject: Re: More on Vonage service disruptions...

>There was actually a story in USA Today a couple of days ago where a 
>family tried calling 911 on their VoIP service during a burglary only 
>to be told by a recorded message that they must "dial 911 from another 
>phone"...

I was surprised to see on Packet8's web site that they now offer E911 in a
lot of places.  You have to have a local phone number and pay an extra
$1.50/mo.  They remind you that if your power goes out, your phone still
won't work, but if you can call 911, it'll be a real 911 call.

This still has little to do with port blocking, but a lot to do with the
whole question of what level of service people are paying for vs.
what level they think they are paying for.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for
Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com,
Mayor "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly.