UK VOIP providers to allow 999 calls

Remember VOIP Solution advertisement saying ‘Does not support calls to Emergency Numbers’ at the bottom of the page. Well in the near future, UK VOIP providers would tell a different story.


Ofcom – the communication watchdog of the United Kingdom – has ordered all VoIP providers in the UK to incur the cost of allowing their customers to make 999 emergency calls by early 2008. Ofcom believes, and rightly so if you ask me, that VoIP series are increasingly adopting the look and feel of traditional telephones, increasing the risk of confusion as to whether users have access to 999 emergency numbers. Moreover, in an emergency, a VoIP (or Mobile VoIP) user would first have to locate a landline or ordinary mobile, leading to delay which might prove critical.

999 is the world’s oldest emergency number – initially available in London before slowly spreading to whole of Britain. It’s counterpart in the United States is the famous 911 emergency call service. Ofcom’s move makes Britain the first country in the world to force VoIP providers to extend their calling services to include emergency numbers. The move came after a survey by Ofcom found that 78% VoIP users who cannot call 999 either thought they could, or did not know whether they could.

Ofcom estimates the cost of allowing VoIP customer calls to 999 to be approximately 90 pence per household per year. Multiply that with the 2.4 million households (as of 2006) using VoIP, and the figure comes out to be $2 Million. A pretty big figure, but remember, the Two Million is not the expense of each individual provider but actually the sum total of the entire British VoIP industry. A part of that expense is actually being borne even now – as some providers like BT and Vonage offer calls to emergency numbers.

Steve Weller, Head of Communication Services at independent price comparison service and switching service, uSwitch.com, said in a statement that Ofcom had been consulting on the importance of VoIP services to allow 999 calls since 2004, but they should have tackled the issue head on last year when services were proliferating and the cost saving of using a VoIP service instead of a traditional landline was being made very clear to consumers.

“Our latest findings revealed that 15% of consumers now have access to a VoIP service at home.” He continued. “VoIP is predominantly being used as an additional service to a landline and to date the ability to make 999 calls was not guaranteed. By enabling 999 calls to be made, the number of consumers using VoIP as an independent form of communication will increase dramatically; it’s just a shame that we’ll have to wait until 2008 to get there.”



So come 2008 and you’ll finally be able to VoIP those three magic numbers. Who knows, you might even end up saving somebody’s life?

This article is written by Samarth Chandola, our full time VOIP News Editor.