The Jeff Pulver Blog: WSJ: President Bush Called Mayor of New Orleans on a VONAGE Phone on Aug 31st:

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September 10, 2005

WSJ: President Bush Called Mayor of New Orleans on a VONAGE Phone on Aug 31st:

During the week after Katrina hit New Orleans, there have been a number of positive news accounts of how IP Communications delivered during the emergency. And if you missed it, there was another great plug for Vonage yesterday on page 1 of the Wall Street Journal in the story: “At Center of Crisis, City Officials Faced Struggle to Keep in Touch.”

The punch line of the story was: “… At 12:27 a.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 31, the mayor's inner circle made its first outside call in two days. Eventually, the team was able to get eight lines running from the single Vonage account. That evening, the phone rang and it was President Bush calling from Air Force One.…”

According to the story, Scott Domke, who is a member of the city of New Orleans technology team, remembered that he had recently set up an account with Vonage and he was able to use his softphone when he connected his laptop to an available internet connection at the Hyatt Hotel.

Personally I think it was great to see Vonage get such a plug in the WSJ. One thing for certain, when the inevitable made-for-TV movie happens, I’m sure the Vonage phone service will be properly showcased. One side note is that how low-key Vonage themselves have been so far in the way their service ended up being used during the crisis and their mention on page 1 of this WSJ story.

There is a part of me that wonders what the case would have been had the FCC not extended their E911 deadline for VoIP and if Mr. Domke would have been one of the customers required to be disconnected by Vonage due to non-compliance issues. Or what would have happened if the Hyatt Hotel’s ISP was found to be blocking SIP traffic in a way similar to what I had recently experienced at the Meridan Hotel a couple of weeks ago in London?

I hold out hope that the FCC and others in Washington, D.C. will find a new appreciation for the IP Communications industry and what is means when “voice really is just an application”, the underlying need to support Net Freedoms, and especially how useful VoIP can be when used during an emergency.

Posted by jeff on September 10, 2005 11:41 AM | Permalink

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Posted by: Gar at October 6, 2007 05:27 PM

There is discussion regarding creating a disaster proof wifi solution when San Francisco creates their Techconnect citywide wifi - this is, by the way, the the same initiative that has received a good amount of press because of the Free wifi offer from Google.

See the real skinny at the forum here:

http://www.archive.org/web/sflan.php

Posted by: Kimo Crossman at October 28, 2005 05:55 AM

This is one more proof that the Internet never fails and VoIP is more reliable than the telephone company networks with their boxes that have 99.999% uptime, NEBS requirements and other nonsense meant to hide their flawed network architecture. I wonder if they will ever understand the Internet and adopt it or just do business as usual, since their cash cow is not yet completely dead.

Thanks,
Henry Sinnreich, pulver.com

Posted by: Henry Sinnreich at September 12, 2005 03:41 PM

September 10, 2005

WSJ: President Bush Called Mayor of New Orleans on a VONAGE Phone on Aug 31st:

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