How does 911 work with VoIP?

This question reminds us of the famous quandary, “What is the Ultimate Answer to The Great Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything?” Which of course, as we all know, the simple answer is 42.

This digression is brought to you courtesy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which was a great book, a horrible movie, and a decent mini-series on the BBC… but this, our friends, will be discussed in a VoipTechChat in the future… perhaps over a great meal at the Restaurant at the end of the Universe.

We tell you that story to tell you this story:

911 with VoIP has a simple answer and it has a much more thoughtful answer as well. The simple answer is that normally, 911 with VoIP works great. The in-depth answer of course, is not so simple.

First, we should probably go into a little picture of how VoIP is different than lets say the traditional phone system. We’ll try to paint a picture for you. Let’s close our eyes… scratch that… if you closed your eyes, you wouldn’t keep reading and then how would you know to open them? Please, do not close your eyes… keep them open… ok… where were we? Oh yeah… let’s close one eye and picture a phone near your bed in your bedroom.

Got it in your head? Great…

Now, with the traditional phone company, this phone is connected to the world with a physical wire from your bedroom, down the road, over the hill, through the woods, and then to the telephone company. When you pick up the phone, they can tell, because even though there’s many, many miles between you and the phone company, they are in essence physically connected to you. They know that when you pick up the phone, you’re picking up from your address. They know this, because they know where the wires are… they paid people to put them down your road… so when you call 911, they know exactly what address you’re calling from.

Now, VoIP doesn’t use wires. VoIP uses your Internet connection to digitally connect to your VoIP Service Provider. When you pick up your phone, VoIP is told, hey… they picked up their phone… yeah… user9123123123 picked up their phone and is making a call.

VoIP has no clue where you are. If you were to ask VoIP, Hey… Mr. VoIP, where’s Mary? VoIP would say “I’m not 100% sure. I think Mary’s at her house. And she told me she lives on Mulberry Street.”

So this of course is the first “consideration” of 911 with VoIP. We’re not going to call it an issue… because after all issue is an ugly word. Issue makes you think problem… and this of course isn’t a problem… it’s only something to consider… so we’ll call it a consideration.

Consideration #1: You need to tell your VoIP company your address.

Not that big of a consideration… but, it’s your responsibility to keep that address current.  So, if let’s say you move… and you forget to update your address with your VoIP Service Provider… guess what? If you call 911, they’re going to assume you’re in the old address… and the new people living there… let’s just hope they’re ok with a surprise visit from the Police.

In all seriousness, your VoIP provider probably has a special section for your 911 address… and this is probably different than your billing address. So please, if you move, please, please, please make sure your 911 address is up to date.

Have you ever had the power go out and still got a phone call? If you said yes, chances are… you’re NOT using VoIP. There may not be an I in team, but there sure is an I in VoIP. And it’s an important letter… the I stands for Internet. In pretty much every situation, if your power goes out, your Internet goes out too. Which means, until your Internet comes back online, you have no phone.

Consideration #2: If your Internet goes down, you have no phone.

Be it a power outage or the dog kicking over your modem, if you lose Internet, you’ve lost your ability to call 911. So, you think that you have a super stable Internet connection and you don’t have to worry… Well Riddle me this Batman… what if you need to call 911 to report that your cable modem is on fire. It sounds silly, but I think we’ve made our point as to why this is a consideration.

And, the good news is we really only have 2 considerations. 

If you have 12 kids with health conditions and you have medical needs where 3 seconds could mean the difference between life and death… do not use VoIP for 911. In fact, go ahead and get 12 lines from the phone company… one for each kid.

And better yet, we have a recommendation too…

Our recommendation is that if you decide to use VoIP, you should have an alternate means of calling 911. It could be a cell phone, it could be a “land line”… but we recommend that you have an alternate means of using 911.

And, if you decide that VoIP isn’t right for you… guess what? We recommend that you have an alternate means of using 911. It’s always better to be safe than sorry.

You may also wish to read:

• Introduction to VoIP
• Voip and DTMF
• What is POTS?