Lab Notes

Leading VoIP provider Vonage is being sued by the state of Texas for failing to inform users that 911 emergency calls do not work with their service. A teenager tried to call 911 from her home after armed robbers shot and wounded her parents, but had to run to a neighbor's house when the call failed.

I don't know much about the merits of the case, but if I were a Vonage employee I'd be pretty shaken by this. It's easy when you are sitting in front of a computer screen to deal entirely in abstractions, but this drives home the point that internet telephony is far more than just a cool techno gadget — people's lives may be depending on it.