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

  • From: Christopher Woodfield
  • Date: Fri Mar 04 12:45:20 2005

This does bring up a hardware design question...I'm wondering how difficult of an engineering/marketing problem it would be to design VoIP adapters with built-in backup batteries. How does the power consumption profile of a VoIP adapter compare to, say, a cellphone? What would this add to the cost of the device, and how long could the battery last?

-C

On Mar 3, 2005, at 10:25 PM, Scott Morris wrote:


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: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John
Levine
Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2005 9:17 PM
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
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, [email protected], Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for
Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com,
Mayor "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly.