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.

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