Vonage Endorses New E911 Standard

Vonage, one of the the leading VoIP
providers in the United States, recently announced that it is backing the National Emergency Number Association’s (NENA) new interim/migratory technical standard for VoIP E911.

The release of this new i2 technical standard actually combines the new technology of VoIP and the existing e911 system interface. This standard enables VoIP providers to provide full E911 service through the existing E911 infrastructure. This is the first of a two part system revamp effort involving IP that was begun two years ago and the first major E911 system design effort since it was first created back in the 1970s.
Vonage has said that with this new system the VoIP industry now possesses a template through which it can quickly deploy a national E911 system in record time. The company said that, until now, the E911 implementations had beeen disparate and varied from county to county. With the uniform i2 standard, it will put network owners, service providers, VPCs and public safety on the same sphere.
This move is a welcome effort from Vonage and conforms to the clamor for putting in an E911 service to VoIP services to ensure that emergency help is accessible even to users of a relatively new technology. This is also a boon for parents who use VoIP phones in communicating with their families and their children when they are out of town.
You can’t help but wonder about Vonage announcement though. In a previous blog I discussed how Vonage was not able to meet a deadline to deploy E911 services to its subscribers. This would have prevented the company from expanding into certain areas. I can’t help but think about how these events played out. Was Vonage already promoting this even before it failed to meet the deadline or did the company adopt this standard as a way of salvaging that failure?
Hopefully, Vonage will be able to shed some light on these issues.