E-911 has been a very hot button in the VoIP industry recently.  There are many issues that various VoIP SPs have been having with the recent E-911 ruling.  Granted a bit more clarity would have been helpful, and the 120-day requirement might be over-ambitious, but to a certain extent, the longer term picture is positive for the VoIP industry (maybe I am showing a bit of my Brazilian bias here, erring always on the side of optimism ;-) but the availability of 911 services from various carriers should help drive VoIP into the mainstream.  Moreover, this will mark the evolution to the next stage of market development, one in which value-added applications take hold, and the value proposition shifts from OPEX savings to productivity gains.

Finally, this mandate will obviously favor VoIP enablers such as Net2Phone and deltathree, as it will lend itself to the enabler model and could drive extra business for both companies. Of course, it will add more complexity to the deployment of VoIP services, but the fact of the matter is that it will also drive more business to 911 enablers such as Intrado and TCS (TeleCommunications Systems).

OK, so this photo might look like it came right from the back cover of a past issue from 2600 (for those of you who are not familiar with this magazine, it is one of the most popular hacker publications - incidentally, the name comes from the fact that hackers in the 60's found that the transmission of a 2600 Hertz tone over a long-distance trunk connection gained access to "operator mode" and allowed the user to explore aspects of the telephone system that were not otherwise accessible).  2600 always publishes some of the photos of payphones around the world, but my intention in taking this shot with my camera was to capture an actual working payphone in Bucharest.  It took me quite a while to find one in the downtown area close to the new Opera House and the Law School from the University of Bucharest.  But, as I was departing, I found one working at the airport (Otopeni) and took a picture.

The malfunctioning of so many phones right in the Romanian capital is a bit of a mystery, but it reminded me of another story that I read a while back while visiting Brazil (more about that in a separate post).