911 Dialing Status - Pending Validation for 5 days now.

Posts: 188 · Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2005 5:11 pm Post subject:

dabones wrote:

there was an incidernt in TX where some young girl called 911 form her vonage phone and she didn't get through, and the robber shot her parents..

Vonage Canada isn't regulated yet, they were mandated to have basic 911 active, by a certain date, but i thin that may have been the end of this year Confused

I can't remember exactly..

you should be fien to try your 911, cuz it isn't real 911 so they can't arrest you.. you will prolly get the police station, and if tey answer "such and such Police" then you'll know who you're talking to and tell them you are calling fom a vonage VoIP line, and you are testing what they claim is 911 service, ask them if you call this number with an emergency will it be handled ok or not...

alot of ppl have done this and no-ones gotten in trouble yet..

The issue in TX was due to the fact the subscriber had not activated 911 dialing on their Vonage account. They (the victims) claimed that they didn't know that it was necessary. When the daughter dialed 911, she received a recording "Stop..........." (the message that used to play when 911 dialing wasn't activated). This incident caused a lawsuit in which the FCC decided to step in and mandate mandatory access to 911 service for all VoIP providers and their customers without the need for the customer to activate the service. The customer is still required to "verify" their the physical address of their adapter but even if they don't, they can still call 911 and reach a human being rather than a machine.

In Canada, the CRTC mandated "basic 911" service to be provided to all VoIP subscribers by November. As far as I know, this requirement has been fulfilled in Canada ahead of schedule. Unfortunately, there isn't a way to know where your call goes without testing it yourself..........yet! In the US, Vonage subscribers can dial "933" and information on 911 call routing is provided. Hopefully, the same solution will be rolled out here. I once wrote Vonage to ask them where my 911 would go and they were unable to tell me but I discovered through testing that it was the Burnaby Police non-emergency line. This was before the CRTC ruling. Then, after the ruling, I moved to different part of Burnaby and had to change my 911 address which initially wasn't accepted by their system like "tbradley" described. It took weeks to resolve even though the address was valid in MapQuest, Google Maps, and Canada Post. When it finally was resolved, Vonage called and asked my wife to test it. She did and then got chastised by the agency that answered the call! Not good for the wife acceptance factor but at least it worked. Due to the attitude displayed by the agency answering the call, my wife was unable to verify who answered the call. When I explained this to Vonage, they said that the HBF group answers and directs 911 calls (www.hbfgroup.com) and they apologised for the attitude my wife received. The attitude my wife received made her think that the "real" 911 (E-Comm, Greater Vancouver) was reached.

Hopefully, the 933 solution will be rolled out here soon, so that no one else has to go through this.