Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Verifying 911 service in VOIP

I work from home full-time and I recently decided to switch my second phone line (my business line) to VOIP to save the company some money. I'd been avoiding it because I'd heard negative comments from co-workers about the quality, but the money I was being charged for my nearly constant teleconferences finally made my decision.

And I'm delighted with the change. I haven't had ANY connection quality issues, even when I'm screen sharing at the same time. It's been crystal clear and reliable. And everytime I make an hour-long long distance call and remember that it is costing me nothing, I smile a little. It's wonderful.

Except for one thing. Every couple of days I'll make a call and a voice will tell me that before they can connect me I have to verify my 911 service is still the same number that they have on file. First, I have no idea why they need to keep asking me this. But even worse is that it won't register my keypress until it has spoken the entire message AND all the options. I've heard this message so often I've started hearing it in my sleep... and yet I have to wait to listen to the whole thing, everytime, before it will let me press "1".

I still love VOIP, but somebody needs to fix this.