If you live in an area covered by 911 service, you probably take it for granted -- knowing that your call will be routed to somebody in your local area skilled in emergency handling if you simply press 9-1-1.

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But that's not how it has been for the first few years of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service. If you use VoIP to connect your phone to the Internet instead of using a standard phone line, your call might have been forwarded to the 911 switchboard -- or it might have gone to an administrative number at a local police or public service department. If it went to the latter, you might have reached a voice mail box and your message might not have been heard for hours -- hardly a good solution for time-critical emergency situations.

Despite the warnings of the VoIP services -- which include Vonage, Verizon's VoiceWing, Comcast, AT&T's CallVantage and others -- that they didn't offer your father's 911 service, people didn't realize that there was a significant difference between their VoIP 911 and traditional 911. So problems have resulted. A woman in Deltona, Fla., blamed Vonage because her baby died after the woman was unable to reach 911 assistance. In Texas, a girl was unable to obtain emergency aid by dialing 911 after she saw her parents shot by an intruder.

This prompted the FCC to require VoIP vendors to provide an equivalent to traditional 911 in order to connect their calls into the public telephone system. The vendors have been implementing the orders so your 911 calls now should go to the proper 911 switchboard.

The challenge to this approach is that VoIP users can move their phones anytime to any location that has broadband Internet access. While this nomadic capability gives users great flexibility, it screws up the 911 capability, because it makes it harder to connect you to the correct 911 switchboard. You'd have to re-register your address when you move your phone.

Most of the Internet telephone services have implemented the FCC's 911 order, but Verizon's VoiceWing service has attempted to go a step further by dealing with nomadic 911 issues. According to Michelle Swittenburg, director of IP Services, the company implemented its nomadic solution on Nov. 28. Now, if the customer disconnects their phone for some period of time, VoiceWing puts their phone service into suspend mode. If they pick up their phone to make an outbound call, they'll hear a message telling them to confirm the address of the phone or give a new address. This also can be done on the Web. Until this happens, the phone will not work. Depending on where the user moves the phone, they may or may not be able to make 911 calls.

It's good to see that Verizon's team is trying to do the right thing, not just what the FCC mandates for emergency calling. However, while the VoiceWing solution to nomadic 911 may work in the majority of the cases, there are times that it will make the situation worse.

Imagine a situation in which an emergency happens before the user has been able to re-register his phone for the new location. It could add precious minutes to the time it takes to reach emergency personnel.

Or perhaps the phone was inadvertently disconnected. Or what if DSL or cable broadband service goes down? With VoiceWing's nomadic 911 procedure, these situations mean loss of phone service.

The company could circumvent these problems by simply checking whether the reconnected phone is at the same internet connection point (IP address). It also should let the user register multiple 911 addresses, and use a voice prompt to direct 911 calls to the proper location.

These solutions aren't perfect, but they'll get closer to 100 percent attainment of the nomadic solution Verizon is seeking.