If today, you have received the same message than me,
If I understand correctly,
it’s 1.50$/month per DID
or
75 DOLLARS per call to 911 if you don’t pay the 1.50$/Month ?
Thanks!
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It’s absolutely unreasonable. If you don’t want a service, you shouldn’t be forced into it—plain and simple. I already have other phones with 911 access if needed, so requiring it on every DID is unnecessary.
The real issue is the lack of control. If there’s no way to block 911 routing, that’s a serious flaw. What happens if someone accidentally dials 911? That’s a $75 mistake. And with all the recent glitches and misfires I’ve seen with this service, I wouldn’t be surprised if they falsely log a 911 call I never made.
And on top of that, they want you to pay for a service that comes with a waiver stating they won’t guarantee it’ll work when you actually need it. That’s not just bad policy—it’s a liability. You’re paying for something that may fail in an emergency, and they’ve already disclaimed responsibility.
4 Likes
You’re 100% right.
I’m just a home user, and the “accidental” call already happened to me once, but that was before switching to voip.ms, thankfully. I don’t have a big bunch of DID’s too.
I do not operate in the USA and do not need 911 service> How can I ensure NO 911 service?
You could write a dial plan that would capture “911” … I would not recommend it if you are operating a business. US and Canadian laws requires the correct routing of 911.
A few weeks ago my wife saw a stupid kid doing a stupid thing on the street where we live (probably doing a TikTok trend) and she decided to call 911. I found out when I got the email alert of the call. I have called 911 a couple of time each year, usually from my cell phone on the road.
$1.50 per month is not a bad cost … one $75 call would cover over 4 years of monthly fees.
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One only needs one DID enabled for 911. You can configure the DID used for 911 calls separately from any other DIDs that you send on outbound calls.
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That’s exacty my case for the moment.
Already paying for 911 on my main DID (ex land line). That’s all.
I have another DID I used for testing at the beginning, and an ex-land-ex-mobile number that we still use to receive calls mainly. “In law” who lives with us 
I have NO landlines and ONLY use voip.ms through a soft dialer (linphone). I would not expect 911 routing though a soft dialer as reasonable or supported.
It does not seem reasonable to me that I can’t disable e911 routing when I only use softphones.
I don’t want a user (also using linphone on their mobile phones) to accidentally dial 911 and I get charged a 75usd fee.
We should be given an option to disable this if we are on softphones already.
I’m a residential customer.
Softphones are certainly an issue when the are used from locations that change frequently. If they are always used form the same street address then one can set up one DID with that address for e911 and it can be set in every account/subaccount used on the softphone as “e911 Default CallerID”/
But if the softphone is used in frequently changing locations, for instance on a cell phone, this will not work. In this case s softphone should not dial 911, as the e911 location set up on a voip account will be most likely not the actual location. On cell phones 911 should only be dialed by the cell phone dialer interface so that the emergency services get the location from the phone GPS or via cell triangulation.
In the Android version (perhaps also in the iOS version as well) of the voip.ms softphone there is a setting: Account/Advanced Settings/Number Rewriting. in the help it states:
“you can do a lot of things with number rewriting which can be categorized as follows:
…
Dial-out account override
You may want to always dial 911 with regular phone line, or assign certain countries to certain accounts”
II could not find any info on Number Rewriting for the voip.ms softphone, but it might be the same as Acrobits softphone (see https://faq.acrobits.net/number-rewriting)
Sorry for the long post, hope it helps
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Part 2:on the voip.ms softphone for android (possibly on the iOS version as well) the number rewriting can be set up in 2 locations:for a specific account under Account/Advanced Settings/Number Rewriting, or for all accounts under Settings/Preferences/Number Rewriting.
To override the softphone and route a 911 call to the regular cell phone dialer set up a number rewriting rule by clicking “+ Add rule”, click “+” near Conditions, select Equal under Condition Type and enter 911. then click “+” near Actions and select Override Call Action under Action Type, then on Override dial Action select GSM Call no it does’t dial uding the obsoleted GSM, it uses the cell phone). you can test this with a regular number, not 911, and you will see that when dialed the call goes via the phone dialer (at least iitdoes on my android cell phones).
Note: the number rewriting is a great feature I just discovered that can do a great variety of things. I wish the voip.ms softphone had a much better help/wiki available explaining in detail all the settings/features.
3 Likes
I too totally disagree with this new policy. That’s a C$105 punishment fee for a 911 call - ridiculous and abusive. Voip.ms has gone from a reprehensible policy of denying 911 emergency calls on lines that didn’t pay an overpriced C$2/mo fee, to an even more reprehensible policy of discouraging and penalizing emergency calls. Coming on top of the recent 29% increase in the basic line fee, this is a real kick in the teeth to customers. May I remind you that the government e911 fee here in BC is zero.
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From where is coming that cost?
I am not a pro, but Voip.ms is liable to high fines if they fail to deliver proper 911 services.
- This is mandatory by law in the US and Canada.
- FCC (US) and CRTC (Canada) can fine thousands (even millions) of dollars for such things.
The $75 cost might even be from their upstream e911 routing partner to pay the 24/7 staff that must manually pre-take the 911 call to ask for and confirm the caller’s address, and then actually forward the call to the 911 call center.
How many DID must I get e911 for?
Only 1 DID:
- Then in Settings > General > e911, select the DID to always use whatever the sub account for any outgoing 911 call.
What if I only use voip.ms with a softphone?
- You may take the risk. But make sure you never dial 911 on your softphone.
- If you have a cell phone, make sure 911 calls will not take any softphone app.
The bright side of things: still cheaper than a landline!
Look at your bills:
- You pay 911 for your landline.
- You pay 911 for your cell phone number.
- This is mandatory. It might be cheaper than $1.50, but this is not voip.
Remember when you came to voip services:
- This was cheaper than any other option!
- I was saving at least $15 CAD per month when I switched, including e911!
- I am still saving 15$ a month after all those years, including e911!
- (And maybe even more nowadays.)
- (And I had not a single option with that landline; nothing! Now I have even more options than any landline provider can offer!)
- I am still saving 15$ a month after all those years, including e911!
Do not look at the $1,50 you pay for e911, look at the $20 you still put in your pocket every month! 
Kind regards!
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Where is theis message appearing? I have not received and notification about a $75 dollar fee for dialing 911. Is there a place in the Voipms site that references it?
-
It says “improperly configured lines will be subject to th 75 dollar charge”. My dashboard says DISABLED as the e911 entry, shouldn’t that block the access?
Customer will be charged a recovery setup fee and a regulatory recovery fee per month for each DID that is submitted to the emergency service database – see pricing. This fee is not refundable.EMERGENCY CALLS PLACED FROM UNREGISTERED OR IMPROPERLY CONFIGURED ACCOUNTS WILL RESULT IN A SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR ($75.00) FEE PER CALL CHARGED TO THE CUSTOMER’S ACCOUNT. THIS FEE IS IMPOSED BY THE COMPANY’S UPSTREAM EMERGENCY SERVICES PROVIDER. CUSTOMER ACKNOWLEDGES AND AGREES TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL SUCH FEES REGARDLESS OF THE NATURE OR OUTCOME OF THE EMERGENCY CALL.
I feel the same way. It gives me a bad vibes feeling, like someone trying to take advantage of me if I make a mistake.
I saw things like that often decades ago with many old cell phone plans (like 100 minutes free and 100 Megs of Data and additional minutes are 1 dollar per minute and 9.99 per additional meg) but wasn’t expecting it from voip.ms, always known for incredible prices.
I’ll still stay with voip.ms, but it really feels like penalizing people who make a mistake or think they won’t need E911 and suddenly do.
If there actually is an incredibly high cost associated with this, it would be nice if voip.ms would explain that.
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I think I’ll be OK.
I have 3 DIDs. Every sub-account will use my main number for outgoing calls. The only DID with E911 enabled.
That should eliminate accidental calls with the wrong DIDs.
For incoming calls, it will be different routing, but it’s not an issue here.
I just have to test everything now. (Not the 911……) 
voip.ms has a test number (1-555-555-0911) for 911.
I didn’t see your reply prior to this. If their upstream provider really charges that entire fee, then I guess it’s not voip.ms’s fault.
I have multiple accounts I manage, so unless I consolidate the numbers all onto a single/my account, I will have to pay MULTIPLE E911 fees. It’s not just 1 E911 fee per month.
Hello @Snuupy,
See my post above. You need only 1 DID with e911, and go to settings to use that one for all outging 911 calls, whatever sub-account you use.
Kind regards!