Kudos to Ron Lieber of The Wall Street Journal, who actually appears to understand the difference between Cable’s VoIP phone service and Internet telephone. (You’d be surprised how many people—reporters included—don’t get it.)

In his piece, “When to Ditch Your Phone Line” (here’s the link; a WSJ subscription is required to access it), Lieber writes, "If you call 911 through the Comcast, Cox Communications or Time Warner phone services, you reach your local emergency operator, who can also see where you are." That’s a critical distinction between most cable phone services, in which calls travel over managed backbone networks, and Internet telephone services, which route calls over the public Internet and can’t guarantee Emergency 911 calling. Lieber also notes that back-up powering is automatically provided with most Cable VoIP services; not so with Internet telephone.

Lieber’s grasp of the distinction is encouraging, but we don’t kid ourselves that the world will automatically understand that VoIP doesn’t equal Internet telephone. For more details on the important differences between the two, click here.