Recently, I’ve got a new soft phone set up on my work computer. Hooray! Before this, I simply didn’t a work phone number at my particular job.
But, there were some interesting extra hoops I had to jump through. I had this E911 thing that needed to be configured and set up with a name, phone number, and location, and it would require me to keep updating it when the IP address changes so that the location information is accurate. What is this all about? It is about making sure that location and other metadata called “E911” is available when a call to 911 is made. Aw, come on, do I really need that? Well, one of the long-standing problems with VoIP was that it could not be generally considered a full phone replacement solution as does not by default provide all information for E911. So some VoIP providers explicitly disclaim having support for 911 calls to avoid hefty fines.
Now, if this is to replace an office desk phone when you are in work, yeah I can see why they’d want to ahve suppprt for E911 too. From a practical policy standpoint, it makes things simpler to be able to claim full 911 support without conditions.
20191211/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1