The death of Vonage VOIP?

Vonage gets hit hard in judgement. Will it fold and go the way of the Dodo?

Judge mandates that Vonage cannot sign up any new customers.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - A judge issued an injunction Friday that would bar Internet phone carrier Vonage from signing up new customers as punishment for infringing on patents held by Verizon Communications Inc.

Last month, a jury in Alexandria, Va., found that Vonage infringed on three patents held by Verizon. The jury awarded Verizon $58 million plus future royalties of 5.5 percent on revenue obtained through continued use of the infringed patents.

On March 23, judge Hilton went even further, issuing a permanent injunction barring Vonage from further use of the patented technology. He said royalties were insufficient given a competitive climate in which Vonage continues to gain subscribers at Verizon's expense.

Poor Vonage, it's always the little guy who gets squashed while Verizon and others gain a monopoly in the communications industry, I agree that Vonage should pay the fine but to forbid the signing of new customers is a death sentence.

[cue the music from those Japanese ladie's in Kill Bill, isn't that Vonage's theme music?]

Wow, I hope they don't just kill off Vonage, I have my home phone on it. I really don't want to transfer back to POTS.

It would be a pain to change.

But it would be worse if you have your 401K tied to their stock. It has taken a serious nose dive.

finance.yahoo.com...

If Verizon has held the patents which Vonage has been using for several years then why hasn't Verizon actually used them instead of sitting on them an not pushing a service like Vonage does. Thats a shame. Vonage has been doing VOIP for a while now.

Death to Vonage, Allah Akbar!

I had Vonage for a while and it was pretty cool, but I actually ended up saving a lot of money switching to a package with my cable company for phone/cable/Internet all in one, so I dropped it.

We went on Vonage when we got Ivanated. The phone co took forever getting the lines re-run, the cable co had the runs back up as soon as the power was back on.

I've been really happy with it.

They just got a stay of execution from the federal appellate court. Lots of legal chicanery left to go.

Originally posted by makeitso
It would be a pain to change.

But it would be worse if you have your 401K tied to their stock. It has taken a serious nose dive.

finance.yahoo.com...

Hmm now or in a few months might be the time to buy. I believe Vonage will rebound over the next few years .. they have some appeals left. May take a few years but if you van get in on the cheap now might not be a bad idea.

I haven't quite made the switch to a VOIP phone yet. My main worry is the 911 issues ... my 5 year old knows the concept of calling in an emergency and god knows where they might route the call if he had to call for some reason.

They have gotten better about routing the calls to the proper center but they still don't come into 911 centers on a true 911 line .. they come in on a PUBLIC line and therefore if a center is busy that call will be answered LAST.

They also have a long way to go in handling a hang-up call .. sure most of them are nothing but you never know. I can tell of case locally where there was a call for a medical aid, the guy passed away with Fire/Ambulance on scene ... 3 hours later Vonage calls to say they got a 911 abandoned (meaning they dialed 911 but hungup before the call was answered) at the address. In this case their was no liabilty because the residents had called 911 from a cell phone so they recieved timely help but imagine if he was alone and that was the only call out ... 3 hours+ later he's found dead .. ridiculous.

When my little one is a few years older I might switch and just post the local # next to phone and explain to him how Vonage works (or doesn't) and that if you hang up you're not getting help.

Vonage CEO resigned effective immediately.

Vonage also announced that they will be reducing the number of staff by 10%, and cutting their marketing budget by $110 million dollars.

Things aren't looking up for the leading Internet telephone provider and its 2.24 million subscribers.

For a while there it looked like VOIP was going to rival, maybe even overtake the major landline telephone companies. Until now.

Vonage chief executive Michael Snyder has resigned

Snyder joined the company shortly before it went public in May. Since then, Vonage's stock price has tumbled by more than 80 percent

industry analysts said, Vonage would have trouble surviving if it is banned from using the disputed technology.

Citron said the company is trying to design alternative techniques to continue serving its customers. "It is important to remember that such workarounds will take time," he said.

I work in Telecoms (interestingly enough, on the "old" PSTN switches) and VoIP has a LONG way to go before it rivals the PSTN.

It's flakey, unreliable and the emergency call issue is not just a US problem but worldwide.

In 5-10 years, it'll be good, but at the moment, it's but a drop in the ocean. Most major telco's are still building the infrastructure needed to enable VoIP to exist in any meaningful way. For this to happen, they have to first intergrate and run the soft switches side by side with the Legacy network's. Gateway's have to put in, agreement's setup blah blah...

My own company has been discussing the "NGN" (Next Generation Network) for at least 2 1/2 years now, yet we only have one ring in for VoIP in London and thats it. BT have begun to roll out their 21CN (21st Century Network) , but only just recently and every Telco in the UK has to wait for them to finish before they can begin to think about building their own networks and interconnecting them.

As it stands, 50% of my companies revenue (we're talking in the region of £1Billion) still comes from Legacy Voice, the next big chunk is Data/IP for business. VoIP earns us nothing.

Actually being an employee of the largest VOIP provider I beg to differ. The quality of the calls are a better then some PSTN lines in rural areas, old homes or old cities.

The death of Vonage? Latest report

Vonage Hit With $69.5M Judgement

Vonage Holdings Corp. was ordered in federal court Tuesday to pay Sprint Nextel $69.5 million in damages for infringing on six telecommunications patents owned by competitor Sprint Nextel Corp. In addition to the damages, jurors awarded Sprint Nextel a 5 percent royalty from Vonage on future revenues. It was the second verdict against Vonage this year.

the decision 'feels like a death knell' for Vonage.

all these VOIP systems are going to die by MagicJack.com... !

The latest on Vonage,

$80 M settlement to Sprint/Nextel and a licensing deal for Vonage to use the Sprint Internet technology:

A Settlement by Vonage Over Patents

...The news buoyed the price of Vonage’s stock amid optimism that the settlement would eliminate one of several clouds hanging over the company. Its shares jumped 123 percent to close at $2.57. The price is still down 63 percent for the year.

Last month Vonage was ordered to pay $69.5 million in damages to Sprint after a jury found that the company had infringed on six of its patents. The settlement with Sprint includes a $35 million payment for the past use of patents, $40 million for future use and $5 million in “prepayment for services.” ...

I thought this would have been the end for Vonage, but it looks like they will be fine having worked out a settlement deal .

Patent law needs to be made so that if a patent is not used within a year or two from issue (translated: there is a product/service you can buy), it is considered "abandoned", and may be used by anyone.

I was a Vonage customer for around 4 years until 2 weeks ago when I switched. I was happy with the service for the most part, until the end. The reason I switched is because my wife got a job with the cable company and they offered us a drastically reduced price for switching to their VOIP since she works there.

After the phone switched, I called Vonage to get my account disconnected. This was two days before my billing date. I was on hold for 15 minutes and when I finally got a person I was told to call back in an hour because their computers were being worked on. I called back in an hour and was told that their computers were down and I needed to call back tomorrow. I call back the next day and I'm informed that they are upgrading their computers and I need to call back in two hours. I call back in two hours and I'm told that their computers are down and I need to call back tomorrow. I explain to the CSR that I haven't been using my service for several days, I've been bounced around their call center for the last two days, and I need to cancel my account before tomorrow so I don't get billed for another month. No help whatsoever. So, I call again the next day after getting billed for another month and, surprise surprise, their computers are down. At this point, I took a few days off and vented to everybody I know that Vonage customer service is piss poor. Two days later, I called back and their computers were finally working. I cancelled my account after answering about 20 minutes worth of questions about why I was leaving. The kicker? even though I hadn't used my service in well over a week and not at all in the current billing period AND even though it was their fault that my account wasn't cancelled 5 days ago, I got zero refund on the new month.

In short, Vonage's service may be great, but their customer service makes it not worth even using them.

I had a bad experience with Vonage with a business account. Their customer service is horrible and they are well known for crappy service and crappy customer service. One of the worst companies I ever dealt with hands down.

I got Vonage for 3 locations for the company I work for and the modem would quit working, the calls would drop and the calls sometimes had the tunnel sound. They refused to overnight me a replacement modem for one location which is a must for a business because no one wants to be down for 3 days because of a equipment malfunction.I explained that I needed it overnighted because the business relies on daily calls and the operator replied with "oh well!".

I'm a network administrator and I spent countless hours on the phone troubleshooting a bad modem with retards that would read from the same script over and over and pass me around like a phone prostitute. I should charge them my hourly rate of $75 for all the crap they put me through.

After canceling they charged me for 3 modems one of which never worked right to begin with and would not let me send them back for a partial refund. In all they got me for about $260 out the door in racked up charges for penalties and whatever crap they could charge to our account.

I hope they go out of business!







[edit on 9-10-2007 by Digital_Reality]