Vendor provides emergency service calls over VoIP

Resellers could be set to benefit from an increase in demand for voice over IP (VoIP) services after IP gateway vendor VegaStream joined the growing number of companies that are providing 999 emergency call facilities over VoIP.

Calls to the emergency services using VoIP technology have long been a problem because contact centres are not issued with the direct location of the caller.

However, Steve Davis, executive vice president of sales and marketing at VegaStream, believes this will soon change.

He said: “Our new gateway sends 999 calls over the traditional public switch telephone network, which means users can make emergency calls over a VoIP service without any difficulty.

“Resellers should be able to sell a lot more VoIP services thanks to this and we are anticipating considerable increase in demand.”

Clive Longbottom, service director at analyst Quocirca, said: “This service is fine provided you have power, but if there is a power shortage then VoIP becomes obsolete.

“Software is not needed to make a 999 call over VoIP. All that is needed is a good routing rule, which is simple to install.”