911 and LNP residential solutions?

[rbrewer]

Hi all,

I'm trying to jump into VoIP mainly to save money on my phone bill.
I live in Southern NJ, USA, and currently have an unlimited calling
plan, which runs about $72 per month here (the Verizon Freedom package).
Unfortunately DSL is not available
at my house, so I have a cable modem. This means if I find the right
VoIP solution, I could drop my phone line altogether. Proper 911 service
and LNP are important features for me. I run Linux and enjoy tinkering
with things, so in the future I may want to run Asterisk at home. But
for now, just using VoIP and saving some money would be nice.

I've looked at a lot of VoIP providers as listed here and on voip-info.org,
and very few have 911 and LNP. Fewer still have 911 and LNP in my
area. Vonage, Lingo, Verizon, and AT&T are the only ones I've found.
Packet8's E911 service would have been great, but is not available
here yet. I tossed Verizon and AT&T due to price.
I nearly signed up for Vonage,
but their service agreement states that dialing 911 may only connect
me to the business office of the PSAP, which may only be answered
during normal business hours. If that's what they consider 911,
I think I'd rather not have 911 service than have a false sense of
security from it. So I'm rethinking my plan.

Maybe I should keep lifeline service on my phone for 911 and keeping
my same phone number, and just get VoIP for outbound calls. My phone carrier's basic plan is around $15 per month. Dialpad.com's $12 plan sounds great for that. Unfortunately, it seems that their
ATA does not hook into the PSTN, so a different handset must be used for inbound (PSTN) calls and outbound (VoIP) calls. That's too much hassle.
Which leads me to Broadvoice: $20 per month for unlimited service and
BYOD. So my total bill would be around $35 per month, still half of what I'm paying right now. So I could buy my own unlocked ATA, and later hook Asterisk
in for some extra fun. This is all well and good, but I only want to
do this if the ATA supports a "normal" dialplan interacting with the
PSTN. If I have to dial something besides "911" on my phone it's not
worth it.

Does anyone know about how that works? The Grandstream Handytone-486 might do what I might want, especially the fallback PSTN during a power failure.
But can it dial 911 directly on the PSTN? Will any other ATAs, like
the SPA-3000 do this?

Thanks for any thoughts or suggestions.

-Rob