reticent wrote:VoIP does not handle emergency calls.
as a blanket statement that is incorrect, with many VSP's the numbers they are assigned are non geographic however that is not always the case and there are plenty of VoIP services out there that are geographically based that are ok for emergency calls, the non geographic type numbers are generally from providers that offer no service level agreement and should not be relied upon as a sole source of communication
the other argument you hear often is that VoIP is only as relaible as your internet connection which has a lot of validity, there are circumstances however where a phone won't work but your internet will so I don't think there is any absolutely foolproof communication method avaialble for the average consumer