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Vonage: Due North and Past Deadline
By CINDY WAXER
TMCnet Contributing Editor
Vonage Canada may be making great strides north of the 49th parallel but its US parent company, Vonage Holdings Corp., still has plenty of ground to cover if it plans on pleasing the Federal Communications Commission.
In the past week alone, Vonage Canada has announced the availability of its flat-rate, full-featured VoIP service to include eight new communities in British Columbia beyond Vancouver and Victoria where the Vonage service is currently available. These new areas include Nanaimo, Prince George, Penticton, Abbotsford, Kamloops, Kelowna, Richmond, and Vernon. Residents of these communities have always been able to use Vonage for local and long distance phone service, as long as they choose a number with an area code outside of their respective municipalities. But that's all changed with Vonage's expansion. Now customers can keep their current phone number or select a new phone number local to their community and receive local and long distance calling for a flat rate.
"With this expansion, Vonage Internet phone service is available in more BC communities than any of our competitors," said Bill Rainey, president of Vonage Canada.
South of the border, however, news of Vonage's failure to meet the FCC's 120-day deadline for E911 compliance spread like wildfire. Vonage is not alone. Many VoIP providers failed to offer its subscribers emergency 911 capabilities in the time allotted by the FCC. The FCC has informed VoIP vendors that if they failed to meet the deadline they could no longer market their service or accept new customers in areas that didn't have enhanced 911.
In its compliance report to the FCC, Vonage said only 26 percent of its customer base had full E911 services. The company, which has more than one-million subscribers, said it was capable of transmitting a call back number and location for 100 percent of its subscribers, but that it still was waiting for cooperation from competitors that control the 911 network.
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Cindy Waxer is a Toronto-based freelance journalist specializing in business and technology. She has written for publications including TIME, Fortune Small Business, Business 2.0, Computerworld, Canadian Business, and Workforce Management. To see more of her articles, please visit Cindy Waxer’s columnist page.
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