VoIP providers urged to improve emergency access
Providers of voice over IP telephony systems need to work proactively to make emergency calls available through the service, an expert in the field has claimed.
Speaking at the IP'07 exhibition in London, Steve Davis, the sales and marketing vice president at VegaStream, pointed out that, at present, VoIP is the only call service not required to allow for 999 calls, with the technology facing a number of challenges before it will be able to do so.
"Specifically, the problems are to do with finding your geographic location, and with what happens if your broadband connection goes down."
In a recent study carried out by the telecoms regulator Ofcom, 78 per cent of households with VoIP were found to mistakenly believe that their service would provide access to the emergency services.
While the regulator has recommended that all VoIP services should be able to make emergency calls, with reports circulating that this could become compulsory by January 2008, the problem still lies with tracing a call to an individual phone rather than to a location given by a PBX server.
At the same time, the Australian Communications and Media Authority has called on the country's VoIP service providers to enable access to emergency numbers and educate their users about a potential lack of access. 
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