Vonage, the undisputed leader among independent residential VoIP providers and bulls-eye for the controversial E-911 issues, has partnered with TeleCommunication Systems to wipe the target off its back and comply with FCC requirements for emergency service capability.

TCS will provide Vonage with Automatic Location Identification (ALI) steering, call routing, call center and other services, which will help Vonage meet the new November 29th deadline for E911 compliance by interconnected VoIP service providers.

TCS was instrumental in defining the call routing model for wireless E911 and claims it was first to provide a wireless E911 call.

Although much work needs to be done within the industry to fully automate the process of location identification, TCS’ solution will help Vonage and other VoIP providers comply with current requirements by coordinating supplied location information with routing instructions and PSAP connectivity.

The TCS solution, hosted from a data center in Seattle, supports the three flavors of VoIP user, which TCS calls static, nomadic and mobile. The company is working on developing several potential solutions to serving these mobile and nomadic users, including technology being developed through a recent collaboration with Skyhook Wireless using a Wi-Fi hotspot database.

“There are a lot of different methods we will be working on to make sure we can get the location information that is needed,” said Tim Lorello, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at TCS.

Vonage CEO Jeffrey Citron said in a statement that this solution is designed to bring his company’s subscribers immediate and direct contact with the needed emergency services and that Vonage is now poised to deploy life-saving services across its U.S. and Canadian footprints.

TCS has taken its wireless E-911 solution to 42 states in the U.S. “So we can pretty much deploy wherever they want,” Lorello said.

Lorello added that there have been lots of ideas about how to make VoIP move the whole 911 industry forward and that TCS is all in favor of that. But he said TCS comprises realists who recognize that [among other things] the PSAPs have funding issues, and with 6000 of them, things can’t happen overnight.

“We are concerned that a lot of the dialogue around E911 has been led by the university consortia and has been very pie-in-the-sky. So we have been spending a lot of time working within the public safety arena,” Lorello said.

The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials said in a statement that they were pleased to see industry partners working proactively on E911 VoIP delivery solutions.