March 22nd, 2005
Texas sues Vonage for lack of 911 call deficiency disclosure
Earlier today, we reported that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said he’s sued Vonage for not being clear about the limitations of its 911 service.
Thecomplaint claims that Vonage is being vague about the fact that users are not being adequately told on sign-up that they must go through a separate sign-up procedure to obtain Vonage’s free 911 service.
The civil suit asks for more than $20,000 in civil fees, as well as injuntion requiring Vonage to be more specific about those limitations.
As with most other Internet phone services,imcoming 911 calls are routed to emergency service administrative offices rather than dispatchers. This is done because Vonage accounts arenormally associatedwith a particular PC that may or may not be at the address where the emergency is occurring.
A somewhat different circumstance prompted the lawsuit, however. Early this month, a 17 year-old Houston girl was unable to get through to the policeon the family’s Vonage line to inform them that her parents had been shot in a break-in.
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Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
