VoIP customers miss evacuation warnings

The emergency phone warning system used to notify residents about this weeks California fires was not able to reach VoIP phone users and houses with only cell phones. E-week reports residents with cell phones and VoIP phones reported not getting the calls to evacuate because the system can only reach fixed address numbers but not so called "nomadic" services such as cell phones and VoIP numbers. Nearly half a million residents were asked to evacuate as fires destroyed over 1000 homes. Vonage is the largest VoIP provider in California and a number of Vonage customers wrote complaints about not getting an emergency warning on the independent Vonage-forum.com.

Vonage spokesman Charles Sahner said Vonage was aware of the problem VOIP carriers have with "traditional emergency notification systems, which are designed to work with the traditional analog landlines -- namely, the old AT&T system. These systems [including Reverse 911] are not designed for 'nomadic' systems like cell phones or VOIP," Sahner said. "They use the old database of land line numbers. We've been working with state and local officials for a long time in an effort to get everybody on the same page. The emergency-system people need to realize that the world is moving to other services like cells and VOIP, and that these lists of numbers should be included with all the older land line numbers."

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