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January 2, 2006

Need unbundled 911 service from Bell

I am in this situation: I would like self-powered, highly available 911 service and use VoIP for the rest of my phone services. We were in a situation at home recently where our cable Internet connection failed for about 2.5 hours during a period where we needed to call 911. As a result, I am switching to Bell local phone service, through at a higher cost and with less features than I was getting from Vonage.

A solution to this problem is simple. It is to require the ILECs to sell emergency-only local telephone services at a price low enough to allow local telephone services over parallel networks (FTTH, DSL, DOCSIS) to gain market share.

Tim Denton and Invited Guests :: VoIP wants to dial 9-1-1 but is getting no dialtone - ILECs need to be forced to provide 9-1-1 service as a standalone product and as a service to competitors.

Posted by thdyck on January 2, 2006

Comments

I was under the impression that Bell kept dialtone on any formerly-active phone line, so that it could continue to be used for 911 calls (and possibly to call Bell to order new service). I think BT does the same thing here in the UK, although I'm not certain.

Of course, if your deactivated line stopped working for some reason, I can't imagine that either company would be particularly speedy about coming around to fix it, considering that it's not making them any money...

Posted by: Chris at January 8, 2006 6:43 AM

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