North American Network Operators Group
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Re: More on Vonage service disruptions...

  • From: Adi Linden
  • Date: Thu Mar 03 18:04:06 2005 
> When that happens, if VOIP access to 911/112 is still problematic, we
> can expect standards for it to be mandated by governments - and they
> WILL do it - there is nothing politicians hate more than an avoidable
> fatality where the blame can be attributed to their failure to act.

So what is legislation going to do short of banning VoIP applications that
connect to the PSTN?  So who's going to stand trial if fatalities occur
because the 911 operator was unreachable? The ISP for having insufficient
bandwidth, the janitor for sharing the DSL line, the phone owner for
dropping legacy PSTN service...?

Who would in their right mind rely on MSN Messenger for 911 access? Today
residential VoIP service offered by Vonage or like companies is nothing
more or less than your instant messenging gizmo. Perhaps it is more useful
but by no means more reliable.

Adi