Vonage Blamed Again… Details Becoming Clearer

Legal Issues

from the sounds-questionable... dept

A few months back there was a sensationalistic story about a family with Vonage who was unable to call 911 for help when some criminals broke into their home. This resulted in the state of Texas suing Vonage, despite plenty of evidence that Vonage makes it abundantly clear that you need to sign up for 911 service separately after you’ve received the phone. The number of explanations and screenshots showing this suggest there’s no way that Vonage hides this — in fact, some say that Vonage goes too far in making it clear. However, sensing a political story that will get some attention, other states have been jumping in as well and the FCC is talking about forcing all VoIP providers to offer 911 service. Of course, this confuses the issue. Vonage does offer 911 service — it’s just that you have to sign up separately. It appears the press loves this story as well, and are now running another story saying that Vonage is being blamed for a baby’s death — but the details are a little more complex this time, and may support the lawsuits against Vonage. Apparently, this family did set up the 911 service, and the calls (two of them) did go through — it’s just that they ended up at recordings, rather than a live dispatcher. So, in this case, it isn’t that Vonage wasn’t clear about needing to set up 911 — but that the 911 they set up didn’t work properly. Of course, that sounds more like a problem with 911 in general (as has been seen before) rather than Vonage specifically. In fact, it seems like the blame should more clearly be placed on the police departments that spent the money raised for the modern E-911 service on things like pens and winter boots, thus delaying the launch of a more modern 911 system in many places.