Vonage SUED over not clearly informing customers re 911 service lacking

Thu Mar 24 18:48:32 UTC 2005

At 01:38 PM 3/24/2005, Oren Levin wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu] On Behalf Of
>J.D. Falk
> > Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2005 1:37 AM
> >
> > On 03/23/05, "Sam Hayes Merritt, III" <sam at themerritts.org> wrote:
> >
> >> Subject: Re: Vonage sold over not clearly informing customers re 911
>service lacking
> >>
>http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/03/23/internet.phones.911.ap/index.htm
>l
> >
> >       That's "sued," not "sold."
> >
> >       And it's a silly case, 'cause Vonage goes to great lengths to
> >       remind new subscribers to configure the service with the real,
> >       physical location of their phone.  Or at least, they bugged me a
> >       lot when I signed up late last year.
>
>Or it's not so silly. The 911 service Vonage prodded you to configure is not
>quite the same as calling 911 from a landline (see below). So even though
>you told Vonage where you are and they send your call to the right building
>you still need to be transferred to the 9-11 call center and you still need
>to tell them where you are.

I'm not sure why Vonage couldn't offer a service to have 911 ring to a 
number you specify. In our town, the alarm companies and anyone on a cell 
phone who wants to reach the proper police department knows to call the 
"non-emergency" number at the dispatch center. Though the call doesn't come 
in over the official 911 circuit, our dispatchers do not treat that line as 
less important. Why not just let us map 911 to that number?

As you note, they offer to map it to some other location, which isn't in 
the same place. My impression is you get a middleman like you would with 
OnStar or similar.