Fergie's Tech Blog

Vonage to Spend $50M on E911

Via Red Herring.

Looking to prevent cable companies from stealing its customers, VoIP provider Vonage said Wednesday it’s spending $50 million to meet the United States federal requirement that all of its customers must be able to be located for 911 emergency services.

Internet telephony is a relatively new business so many companies could not guarantee that 911 dialers could be located by emergency services. Federal law requires wireline services to be able to locate callers for 911 services.

As the largest independent VoIP provider, with 1 million lines in service, Vonage faced lawsuits and a publicity battle when several customers failed to get help after dialing 911.

Now, the Holmdel, New Jersey-based VoIP company is using its cash to make sure that customers don’t feel more comfortable signing up with the big cable companies that are rapidly gaining VoIP subscribers.

posted by Fergie @ 12/14/2005 12:35:00 PM