On March 22, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed suit against Internet-based digital phone provider Vonage Holdings Corp., claiming that the company does not make clear that its service does not include immediate access to traditional 911 emergency-number service. Abbott argues that the company’s failure to clearly disclose the service limitations led to tragedy last month during a home invasion in Houston, which ended in two members of a family being shot several times after a family member could not reach police using a Vonage broadband phone connection. “This family’s moment of crisis signals a dire need for Vonage to clearly communicate to its Internet telephone customers that 9-1-1 access may not be available to them,” Abbott said in a press release. “This is not just about bad customer service; it’s a matter of life and death.”
Vonage and other Voice Over Internet Protocol service providers may or may not have arranged access to the 911-database and connection system provided and maintained by established local phone carriers. Currently, Vonage customers must intentionally activate their 911 service. Even when activated, emergency calls made by Vonage customers are not automatically linked to the traditional 911 call service. Instead, their calls are routed to a so-called Public Safety Access Point, an administrative line at the local call center, which requires an operator to then route the call to an actual emergency call taker. Moreover, callers must then provide the address for their emergency since the PSAP does not have access to the systems that provide first responders with info about the caller’s location. In addition, Abbott argues that because the company’s service accesses only the call center’s administrative phone lines, some calls may actually go unanswered if made outside “normal business hours.”
Vonage is reportedly working on providing better emergency call access; currently, only their Rhode Island customers have access to the traditional, so-called “enhanced 911” system.
This article appears in “The AC” Gen Y Magazine Debuts.