Worse than no 911

In general I have not been a supporter of the frenzy with which the telecommunications industry has pursued the nascent VoIP providers with the demand that 911 services be activated properly... My point in the past has been that cellular operators have squeezed out from under the requirement to have location analysis for 911 calls over and over again... so why are we insisting that VoIP providers know where there customers are calling from? But after reading this account of someone using the Vonage 911 service my views on the subject have changed.

In this case, Corey had correctly set up his Vonage account with his address... but when he called 911 the call had to be transferred twice before getting someone who would respond to the incident (gunshots in the street outside his building). Read his transcript of the experience.

Forget about the issue of having one's address correctly registered in the Vonage database. Forget the issue of whether or not you are using your Vonage account from that address at the time you make the call. We should hold VoIP providers, at least those like Vonage that offer VoIP as a primary connection to the PSTN (and thus a replacement for the PSTN) to the same basic requirement that cellular operators are held to -- sure, they may not know where you are. But they do have a system for funneling your emergency request to the right person for a response.