Connections wil be allowed to e911 service in New York WASHINGTON – Verizon Communications, a large incumbent telecommunications carrier in the U.S., announced Tuesday that it will allow competing voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) carriers to connect to its enhanced 911 emergency dialing service.Verizon will allow VoIP providers in New York City to connect to its E911 service by mid-year, Verizon said in a press release. If the New York test is successful, Verizon will offer the service elsewhere in its U.S. market area “as soon as possible,” said Mark Marchand, a Verizon spokesman.Currently, most VoIP providers do not offer 911 service that transmits the caller’s name, address or callback number to emergency dispatch centers. VoIP provider Vonage Holdings has complained that Verizon and other incumbent telephone carriers have withheld E911 service from VoIP providers that compete with the incumbents’ telephone service. Verizon will be the second large incumbent carrier, after Qwest Communications International, to offer E911 service to VoIP providers, said Brooke Schulz, senior vice president of corporate communications for Vonage. In March, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Vonage, accusing the fast-growing VoIP provider of not warning customers about limits to its 911 service. The incumbent carriers’ refusal to provide 911 service to competing VoIP providers contributed to Texas’ lawsuit, Schulz said.In the lawsuit, Abbott accuses Vonage of not sufficiently warning customers that its 911 service doesn’t work the same as E911 offered by traditional telephone service providers. Vonage, however, say it warns customers multiple times that they have to sign up for 911 service for it to work on their VoIP lines.Schulz cheered Verizon’s Tuesday announcement. “We were the catalyst for that solution, so we’re really looking forward to it being available soon,” Schulz said of the Verizon announcement. But Verizon’s Marchand said the company has been working for months on E911 service for VoIP providers, and it worked with several groups, including the National Emergency Number Association and the U.S. Congress E911 Caucus, to implement the new service.Even after VoIP providers get access to Verizon’s E911 system, VoIP customers will still have to provide up-to-date location information to ensure that their 911 calls are routed to the right emergency dispatch center, Verizon said. Technology Industry