For the Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers, the regular Phone Company, they are half scared to death. Competition is usually a good thing for us customers, but they are so scared right now that they are fighting this in every way possible. Just try to order a DSL line with no regular phone service on it. You'd think that you were asking for the world. That is one reason why Vonage goes so well with cable internet. The Cable TV Companies have no love lost when it comes to competing directly with the Phone Company. If you can only get DSL in your area then this is still great for a second line, or a FAX line, or just for the sake of nearly effectively free long distance service.

Planning for 911 emergencies. You should have a cell phone for 911 anyway. If the power goes off, so does the Cable or DSL and the Vonage with it, unless you have a battery back-up UPS like I do. The backup power for the internet equipment at your own house is your own responsibility with most VOIP providers. The 911 service provided by Vonage requires you to give them your address when you sign up. If you move, you have to update the 911 address location yourself, but this is real easy to do at the Vonage web site. For incoming calls during a power outage you can set the call forwarding to your cell phone number to kick in when the Vonage is down.