Half-baked opinions, served lukewarm.
A potential downside of Internet Phone: it turns out that 911 calls made from Internet Phones are treated with lower priority than 911 calls made from landline phones.
A St. Paul emergency call center said that because incoming calls from such services as Vonage don’t show address and caller it takes longer to respond. There’s a separate bank that fields these calls, and this bank doesn’t get attended to until the regular-phone 911 calls have been processed.
A potential downside of Internet Phone: it turns out that 911 calls made from Internet Phones are treated with lower priority than 911 calls made from landline phones.
A St. Paul emergency call center said that because incoming calls from such services as Vonage don’t show address and caller it takes longer to respond. There’s a separate bank that fields these calls, and this bank doesn’t get attended to until the regular-phone 911 calls have been processed.
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Yep…
In Tooele, from what I understand, the local PSAP (Public Safety Access Point) is actually the 24-hour non-emergency number at the police station.
I’ve often said, a VOIP phone is only appropriate for you if you have a broadband connection and a cell phone. If you lack an alternative method of getting ahold of 911, or dealing with a power outage that takes out your internet link, it’s not an ideal solution.
That doesn’t stop people from using it, though. My co-worker is replacing her cell phone with a VOIP phone, ultimately because she has a phone at work, and a phone at home already. Different levels of requirements, I guess.
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Matthew P. Barnson