Now that broadband Internet access is widely available, many home users are switching their land lines to VoIP. In fact, that’s one of the first things I did when broadband access finally made its way to my neighborhood. Why switch? Cost was my primary motive. Why pay the phone company a minimum of $35 each month (that’s with no long distance calls and no features such as Caller ID) when I could pay Vonage less than $20 for 500 minutes of local and long distance calls plus every possible feature I could imagine?
But, VoIP comes with its drawbacks including a major one: 911. Yes, you can call 911 with a VoIP phone (once activated); however, unless you have set up your VoIP account with your correct information, the emergency dispatchers won’t automatically know where you are physically located in an emergency.
Imagine calling 911 and passing out before you can tell the dispatcher where you live. With a phone company land line, the dispatcher sees a computer screen displaying your physical location and can send an ambulance, fire truck, of police car to your home. Help is on the way! With a VoIP phone, when you dial 911, you are dialing a centralized dispatch center. Unless you have gone in and typed in your location beforehand, the dispatcher will not know where to send help. They may not even know what state you are calling from!
In addition, VoIP phones are portable. Even if you registered your address, you can take your VoIP account with you on vacation or when you move. Let’s say you’re on vacation and use your VoIP phone to call 911 from your hotel. The dispatcher won’t know that you’ve taken your phone with you and may dispatch emergency crews to your vacant home.
If you have a VoIP account, do yourself a favor and register your physical location. For example, with Vonage, 911 calling is not automatic. You MUST activate it. Do this by logging into your Vonage account and going to the Features tab. Click the link under Dialing 911.
Be aware that VoIP 911 calls are not necessarily automatically routed to your local emergency dispatch center. First, when dialing 911 on a VoIP phone, you may be routed to a national call center before eventually being transferred to a local dispatcher. I have programmed the “local 911″ phone number into my phone so that I have a choice. Instead of dialing 911, I might be better off dialing this local number in an emergency.
Also, if your Internet access is down, such as during a power outage, your phone is useless.
Celeste Stewart | August 14th, 2008
You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
