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The nature of IP makes it difficult to locate network users geographically. Emergency calls, therefore, cannot easily be routed to a nearby call center, and are impossible on some VoIP systems. Sometimes, VoIP systems may route emergency calls to a non-emergency phone line at the intended department. In the US, at least one major police department has strongly objected to this practice as potentially endangering the public.

Moreover, in the event that the caller is unable to give an address, emergency services may be unable to locate them in any other way. Following the lead of mobile phone operators, several VoIP carriers are already implementing a technical work-around. For instance, one large VoIP carrier requires the registration of the physical address where the VoIP line will be used. When you dial the emergency number for your country, they will route it to the appropriate local system. They also maintain their own emergency call center that will take non-routable emergency calls (made, for example, from a software based service that is not tied to any particular physical location) and then will manually route your call once learning your physical location.

The United States government had set a deadline, requiring VoIP carriers to implement E911; however, the deadline is being appealed by several of the leading VoIP companies.

This is a different situation with IPBX systems, where these corporate systems often have full E911 capabilities built into the system.

While the traditional Plain Old Telephone System (POTS) and mobile phone networks share a common global standard (E.164) which allocates and identifies any specific telephone line, there is no widely adopted similar standard for VoIP networks. Some allocate an E.164 number which can be used for VoIP as well as incoming/external calls. However, there are often different, incompatible schemes when calling between VoIP providers which use provider specific short codes.

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