Vonage Launches E911 Fallback Center

Vonage Launches E911 Fallback Center

July 27, 2005

By Staff

Vonage, rushing to meet Federal Communications Commission mandates for the provision of E911 to voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) customers, is setting up an E911 “fallback center” to handle 911 calls from its VoIP customers who, for any reason, can’t be automatically routed to the correct public service answering point (PSAP). TeleCommunication Systems (TCS) will run the center for Vonage.

The VoIP venture looks to be a new business for TCS, whose specialty has been E911 services for the wireless industry.

Vonage is looking to avoid a situation in which VoIP customers, instead of being routed to the correct PSAP, may have their E911 calls forwarded to the administrative phone numbers of an emergency agency – where the phone rings off the hook but nobody answers. Such situations aren’t going to be allowed under the new FCC rules.

Here’s the way the new fallback center is supposed to work: If a Vonage VoIP customer’s call can’t be routed to the correct PSAP in the same way as a call from any standard telephone, it will be sent to the center where live operators will manually route the call to the proper location. The center will, of course, be manned 24/7/365. Vonage hasn’t released an estimate of what percentage of its customers will be provisioned for direct connection to PSAPs or how many might have their calls answered at the new center.

Vonage management is calling the new center “an additional safety net” for their customers. It’s also just as much a safety net for Vonage that, like all VoIP carriers, must have E911 solutions in place soon; in May, the FCC gave the carriers 120 days.

Meanwhile VoiceLog LLC, a major “third party verification” vendor, has jumped into the VoIP E911 fray with a service it’s designed to meet FCC requirements that carriers notify VoIP customers of the status of availability of E911 service. The new FCC rules mandate carriers notify customers of any E911 limitations – a task VoiceLog hopes to do for them with its new service. called “E911Alert.”

VoiceLog says that – for prices that start at less than 10 cents per call – it will contact VoIP carriers’ customers (using an automated outbound calling system that plays a recorded message that notifies them of E911 limitations), it will get “affirmative acknowledgement” that customers have received the information, and it will maintain the records needed to prove a VoIP carrier has met the FCC’s regulations. Essentially, the service is the same as those the company already provides for a host of telecom carriers, as well as gas and electric utilities, to meet other regulatory requirements.

“Getting affirmative acknowledgement from every customer is an incredible challenge,” says Larry Leikin, vice president at VoiceLog.