Vonage, SBC Fight Over 911 Calls
from the what-are-they-doing? dept
Vonage is in a bit of hot water over its E911 efforts lately -- though, it seems to mostly be a political ploy. However, now comes the news that Vonage approached SBC last month about running a private trial of an E911 service that would require SBC to give Vonage access to some routers and databases. SBC refused, pointing out that if they work privately with Vonage, there are a hundred other VoIP providers who will want to work privately with them also. They would prefer to come up with standards across the board that everyone can use -- which makes a lot more sense. While Vonage's request was a bit silly, it does show they know how important the VoIP-911 issue is becoming. Update: Of course, some are claiming this means VoIP E911 service will be held up -- which is ridiculous. This is only about delaying E911 for Vonage's proprietary method of doing E911. In this case, SBC is right. There should be a standard way, across the board for VoIP providers to do E911 and connect with the telcos.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
