Phones

I’m not looking to switch to a new provider (like Vonage). I just want a service like K7 or GrandCentral that has a Canadian area code (ideally 604, but I’m not picky).

We also both use Vonage which is way cool. We could totally be twins. Vonage is an internet based phone line. We tossed our land line years ago, but when my oldest daughter (a teen) moved in we needed to have a phone at home. Vonage is not expensive and long distance is free which is awesome for us because my husband has family all over and my daughter can call her friends from her old school!

Though not as well-known as Skype or Vonage, FWD, now 12 years old, is the longest-surviving VoIP company in the world. From the beginning, FWD distinguished itself through advocacy efforts (e.g. FCC Pulver Order) and enabling tools (e.g. free SIP device registration), which helped the company attract some 700,000 registrations.

Vonage Communications and PR VP Karen Cleeve is probably kicking in-house flack Charlie Sahner under the table right now. In yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle, Sahner was soundbited in the following gem:

VoIP is Voice over Internet Protocol. Standard telephone lines are referred to as PSTN or the Public Switched Telephone Network. PSTN works on circuit switching. A good example of circuit switching is the old switchboard operator who would connect callers to receivers by the use of electrical circuits. VoIP is Packet Switching. Packet Switching consists of data packets, or packets of information being carried across the Internet, from your computer to either another computer or PSTN telephone.

I’ve been following the progress of two very different companies with a very similar M.O.: capture business at the ILECs’ expense. These two companies are Covad and Vonage. Both share a desire to compete against the Bells, and both offer a net result of the Bells losing revenue. But one is diversified, forward-looking, and asset-rich (Covad) while the other is mired in question marks and is asset-poor (Vonage).

On the Voice over IP front, Comcast said it had signed up 1.5 million digital voice subscribers in 2006, giving them 1.9 million total, a user number roughly equal to that of independent VoIP provider Vonage. But just comparing Comcast to Vonage really doesn’t make sense, since Comcast’s reach and market opportunity (with video and broadband services) eclipses Vonage’s POTS replacement biz.

You may have heard we got a little bit of snow and ice here in the Seattle area. My Mom tells me everyone back home in TN is asking her how I’m coping with the weather. :) We didn’t really get that much – at least where I live, but the roads did get super icy so the entire city was shut down. And since I work from a home office and had to share my internet connection with thousands of telecommuting workers this week, that meant my productivity also took a hit. Slow loading of web pages is one thing, but since I have Vonage (usually love it), I couldn’t even talk on the phone for a couple days.

I'm seeing the usual suspects like Vonage and SunRocket, but then I see deals from companies like provider ViaTalk who are offering 6 months for free and I'm thinking maybe I should check them out. These guys must be new because I never heard of them until today, but from their site, it looks like their service is almost identical to the major VoIP players out there...and cheaper.

Vonage has huge issues with its service. In our small office where I work, we use Vonage as our main telephone service, just as many others are doing today. We’ve had nothing but continuous problems with the service. The biggest issue has been the fact we can’t call specific (and at random) telephone numbers. For example, the other day I was trying to call a 1-800 number to dial into a conference call from Microsoft. When I dialed the number using Vonage… all I got was silence. No rings. Nothing. I hung up and used my cell phone and it worked great. We’re finding we have to use our cell phones for quite a bit of phone calls when attempting to call out in our office. We’re having issues calling local and long distance numbers and completely at random so it seems.

These “home communication centres” might now be know as our Internet-enabled computers. We are converging on one communication line out that is our Coaxial Cable which provides TV programming and Internet access. Since I get telephone service via VoIP (i.e. Skype and Vonage), I’ve not been using the telephone line ever since.

So if I'm not answering your email, blog comments/contact submissions, or voice mail... well now you know why. And yes, I know my voice mail message is old, for some reason Vonage's VM system won't let me overwrite my old greeting (and I lost patience being on hold yesterday trying to resolve it)!

It's been a bad few months for VIOP provider Vonage. First the stock offering gets hammered - causing customer turmoil. And now phone competitor Verizon claims it owns key patents and Vonage is infringing.

Like switching to Vonage. The Vonage phone commercials have always irritated me: First of all, they stole the theme song from the 5,6,7,8's recording in Kill Bill Vol. 1, meaning that every time I watch that magnificent movie, I have to think about the idiotic Vonage commercials. On top of that, the videos they show are obviously staged (think back upon them and ask yourself if it makes any sense that someone would actually be filming these things on home video while not expecting anything to go wrong).

Also, don’t think I’m just talking about video files here! Anyone got a Vonage line? Yeah, Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) is F’ed if this goes through. Think about it, the companies pushing for these laws are the PHONE companies. They’d just love to force you back to paying ridiculous rates for local and long distance calling!

As it stands, Vonage stock is off 30% from its initial price of $17.00. “Going public,” is not a panacea for company ills. A fundamental axiom for a successful IPO is that a company must offer a product that creates customer value. High subscriber turnover suggests dissatisfaction and the dissatisfied multitudes that have disappeared out Vongage’s back door would unanimously agree regarding this IPO, “I told you so.”

So if Verizon starts offering voice-over-IP (VOIP) service, they could make it so that all Vonage packets moving in their network are slowed so much that they effectively make Vonage service useless. Since all three backbone providers in the U.S. plan to do this (yes, they really do) there isn’t even a competitor to switch to. If your ISP uses AT&T, Verizon, or Bellsouth for it’s backbone connection (or your traffic needs to go through their network) you must subscribe to their VOIP service or you won’t get VOIP at all.

From the Customer Directed Share Program page, shares are offered to customers first.

We’re not the only people trying to rid ourselves of the local telephone company. For a very brief time we were going to go down to them just forwarding our existing telephone number to our Vonage VoIP lines but when Comcast couldn’t come through at our physical location then we were back to the local telco. You know how much they wanted to charge just to forward our existing main phone number to our VoIP lines? $18 + $4 tax. 22 bones for a computerized redirect. What a scam. Oh, and it took them three business days to do this. Three business days?

My Vonage equipment arrived (as expected) yesterday evening…nice and speedy shipping is always a plus. Total setup time was less than 10 minutes; the phone automatically configured itself (and even includes an extra ethernet port, which is nice as I’m running out of sockets) and was usable immediately. Everything about the phone and service is completely configurable via the Vonage website (such as setting up voicemail, data speed, etc). The coolest feature IMO is that I can check my voicemail from any web browser without even having to call in! Call quality is crystal clear, and something else I didn’t realize is that I can take the phone/hub with me anywhere…if there’s an internet connection I just plug it in and blammo, I’m good to go.

Why should the large telecommunications companies like the Time Warner Syndicate, Cox Communications, and Verizon determine what I can and cannot do with my Internet connection? The Internet is the greatest engine of free speach and free enterprise ever created. It is the greatest forum for democratic ideals ever made. Everyone has a voice on the Internet and everyone can do with it what they wish. But, by voting against the protection of the neutrality of the Internet the US Congress could be irrepribly harming all of that. Think about it, if and when this is passed by the full Congress, your cable modem provider could block VOIP traffic from every company except their own…so no more Vonage. They could block scheduling packets from TiVo in order to force you to use their own DVR systems.

Vonage ran a test. It seems the ISP was blocking the cable modem when the Vonage adapter went into use. I ran a test of my own. I ran pingplotter for 10 minutes: no blockage, then I picked up my Vonage phone and placed a call: immediately there was a 100% blockage on the cable modem. This was a continuous loss as long as the phone was used.

The same problem still exists. Perhaps the so-called ‘plate’ on the pole needs to be changed. At this point in time I have a giant headache. High speed was supposed to be great and save me lots of time. Not only do I have high speed but I have Vonage as my telephone which is internet based so when I lose my internet connection, I lose my phone as well. This is really great when talking to clients…

Update: I have now had the chance to read the Vonage filing which is betterdescribed as a request for an investigation as opposed to a complaint. In fact, Vonage concludes its submission by arguing that “Shaw’ s QofSService has the potential to greatly damage nascent competition forlocal VoIP services across its serving territory. Vonage Canada is ofthe view, however, that not enough is known at this point about theShaw service in order to formulate an appropriate regulatory response.”

Look at this report from a Vonage user: could not dial an emergeny # on vonage tonight The summary is a small child had swallowed something, and they needed to reach a poison control center immediately, and couldn't get through on their Vonage line. After a couple tries to dial on Vonage they switched to their cell phone and went right through. In the followups as others gave their own horror stories.

Plenty of digital ink has been spilled covering the Vonage IPO. If this interests you I strongly suggest reviewing the articles summarized in a recent Seeking Alpha Post.

After my initial report on the Skype Mouse Phone, I knew it was only a matter of time until a VoIP keyboard would come out. Well yesterday must of been my lucky day, because after I was right about the Vonage IPO, I saw an article about the first VoIP keyboard.

Yeah, it’s been a mess with them. Their incompetence is atrocious, and I’ve given more than a few verbal ass-kickings to their support/customer service people, believe me. So far I’m happy with Vonage for my office & fax, at least it’s a consistent bill and the service is actually good as long as I’m not doing heavy uploading. Now, I have to give Charter some credit, the Internet service is pretty stable. I was one of the first people in my county (#5, in fact) to get Cable Internet, and let me tell you — they’ve come a long way. I have a metric ton of stories regarding the “early days” but now it’s rarely down, and pretty fast.

The post points to the fact that the proprietary technologies of Skype and Vonage and other VOIP providers could pose a security risk. Read the post. He makes some very good points and points to more genuinely interesting observations by a group that watches such things.

It is careful to point out that tracking and monitoring are two completely different things. Your cell phone calls are being tracked (again, not monitored). Your home phone calls are being tracked. Each month you get a list of who you called and, at least with Vonage, who called you. Just like a cell phone bill. When you buy something using your credit card, that is being tracked. Wait until that data starts to get sold around to people. When you make an online payment, it is tracked. When you log into any site using a User ID and a password, you guessed it, it is being tracked. If you work for a company with more then 5 people in it, odds are pretty good that everything that you do online can not only be tracked, but it can be monitored.

This morning I signed up for Vonage to be the primary phone provider for our house. I’d be interested in hearing - via comments - other people’s experiences with Vonage or other voip providers.

On a somewhat tacky geek side note I can say that despite the fact that they shut off the power my webserver and network stayed online uninterupted on UPS power for over 2 hours. My vonage line even had a dial tone since I threw the cordless phone on one UPS. That’s it for now. I’ll post pictures of the front of the building tomorrow.

Now I travel a lot and in terms of miles I am often further away. But in The Bahamas I was not reachable by cell phone. That was the worst part. I could and did call home from my sister's house. They have a Vonage phone and that was great. But it wasn't as if I could just on the spur ofthe moment call home. Nor could my wife call me if something went wrong at home. Which it did. She was able to handle it fine of course. But it would have been nice if we could have talked about it. This is something I am going to have to look into - international cell phone service - should I travel outside the US without her again.

Well, this has been a productive lunch break. While dining on Campbells “Soup at Hand,” I have finally managed to call the real estate agent who is listing our house, and cleared up what the deal is. Apparently Vonage has been eating our voicemails again, because she actually has had several interested parties, but not knowing we’d moved out, she couldn’t set up a showing. She is now abreast of the fact that the house is empty (mostly, and messy I warned her). But I am really encouraged by the fact that people have recently wanted to see it, even with the market being a bit slow right now.

Vonage: Nice idea, execution? Somedays it’s choppier than the French revolution but those calls are at least made. The problem is this. Companies with certain types of 1-800 numbers or that rely on reading the ANI (Automatic Number Identification) from your phone to grant you account access or activate a credit card are not being sent anything they want to work with. They think I am in another area code so no card until I call the cc people, Joy oh joys. I really want to like Vonage but I keep getting crappy reports on international calls making one of the best reasons to have it , 3c to the UK, moot.

On the positive front, I jumped onto the Voice over IP phone service by signing up with Vonage. My first call was to my mom and stepfather in Florida and it worked really well. I'm happy and would recommend it to anyone. It only costs $25 per month for unlimited calling and free long distance in the US and Canada.

This company uses Vonage broadband phone service. I have to say I’m impressed. Before I signed up, I wasn’t sure what sort of hardware to use — I was concerned I’d end up with something that was totally proprietary and would never work with anything else. Turns out, the phone adapter I chose, the Linksys RTP300, is just a regular old Linksys router that happens to have two phone jacks preconfigured (by Vonage) for access to their network. It’s nothing super fancy, but it works quite well.

This always happens to me. I have only signed up for Vonage for about two months and I just heard about Broad Voice. I've also been learning about Asterisk (inspired by this.) I was considering setting up an Asterisk server and getting an account with FreeWorldDialup, or some other vendor that offered bare bones connectivity to the traditional phone network. My wife is still using this computer we bought in 2000. I have been trying to get her off of it for about a year now, so I can re-comission it for thins like this.

this went on for a while… until I realized… its the Vonage line!!! The whole analog to digital back to analog thing meant the box could net get it’s initial update (which would allow me to connect a broadband connection).

My broadband phone service, which is purchased through Vonage, is better than ever after they recently sent me a new Linksys terminal adapter to replace the old Motorola one. Turns out that old device was wreaking havoc on call quality and reliability (big time). It even prevented my non-voice traffic from working reliably. But with the new hardware in place, all is well.

1. 100% Guarunteed Bandwidth alotment
2. Right to connect anything to the network
3. Right to connect any number of systems to a network

I talk to my daughter in Okinawa almost every day. We gave them a Vonage phone (nayy) to take with them. Costs me $30/month. Thank some smart people and the internet.

On another note, I’m off home toBarbados in late September for a few weeks. First stop will be my grandfather’s place to fix his home network, and ensure his DSL line works satisfactorily. I’ll also be installing a Sipura for him, probably a two line one so he has options. He probably won’t use the options, but I think I’ll configure the primary line with either Gossiptel (who seem to have problems recently :( ) or the UK Vonage service. The secondary line, I’ll stick on FWD - he’ll be able to dial myself and my parents for free that way (and could do with Gossiptel, we both have Gossiptel accounts), and could also dial 800 numbers in the USA.

(17:48:20) Mike: because my voice number is Vonage that simul-rings my home phone, office phone and cell phone

And finally, to end today's non sequitur, I noticed this weekend that I'm such a drone to marketing that when I catch myself about to do something stupid, my mind plays the Vonage music. I'm not digging this at all.

Saturday morning I woke up at a criminally early hour (for a weekend anyhow). Since sleep apparently wasn't in the game plan I decided to call Vonage to see if I could actually get someone on the phone, and if I could convince them to listen to me long enough to troubleshoot a hardware/firmware problem I've been having with my VOIP terminal adapter.

My internet broke on Friday, right before I left to go interfere with Chris for the weekend, so I didn't have time to do much about it (i.e., call Cablevision), so when I came home this afternoon, I called for help. I think all I had to do was press the "Power" button on the cable modem, as it appears everything is currently functional. It's kinda a pain when the cable modem goes, though, because I use Vonage, which means my phone line is connected through the cable modem, and I pay the Cablevision bill through the internet, which means I don't get paper bills, which means I can't access the internet or call Directory Assistance to find their tech support number to call them. And although I do have a cell phone, the fact that I live in a basement apartment means I have to go outside to get phone reception, which means that when the tech support guy (or gal) asks me a question or tells me to do something, I have to explain why I have to put them down and run into the house. I lose internet connectivity maybe 2 or 3 times a year (usually because I'm moving wires or cleaning or something), so it's not a really big deal, only a hassle that makes me reconsider not having a "real" phone line or something similar. Ahh well.

Parsing the information, (which comes from market research firm Point Topic), we see that as of the first quarter of this year, the top ten VoIP providers listed by number of customers were:

1. Skype- 5,300,000

Rich Tehrani of TMCnet posted today that there are rumours of Bell South purchasing Vonage at 3.5 billion dollars US. http://blog.tmcnet.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/9198. The blog wires are humming with comments etc about this today, and there's all kinds of interesting analysis. I'm gonna add some too, although I'm no analyst, and don't really know all that much anyways....

So, for a technology with so much promise and convenience, this area of the country is totally left in the dark. You can stroll into any electronics store in town and buy Vonage adapters, but you cannot get Vonage service locally. Hey Vonage ( or any other VoIP provider), roll out service in this area and you would quickly make a killing. Why sell the adapters, but not provide the service? I’m sure it makes sense on some marketing level, but in the meantime we’re left with either making serious compromises or avoiding you. Any company with half a brain could easily blow the other two providers here right out of the market. Anyone out there have half a brain?

I have Vonage, and I have a SoftPhone line. I’ve had this problem (and according to what I’ve seen elsewhere on the net, I’m not the only one) where I was unable to place any calls with the supplied software on Mac OS X Tiger—I’d get a “499 Not Acceptable Here” error every time I tried. However, I had no problem receiving calls, nor placing calls from non-Tiger boxes.

If you’ve been interested in trying out the Vonage VoIP service well Linksys and Vonage has a deal for you. Purchase one of the new Linksys Wireless-G VoIP routers and receive several rebates that essentially makes your router free. This only works if you had a previous Linksys Wireless Router before hand AND if you plan on using Vonage’s VoIP service.

Instead you have someone like Vonage operating their own closed voip network as the posterchild for voip (sorry Jeff) much like AOL for many really IS or WAS the Internet...for several, Vonage IS VoIP - let's face it. Even worse, we're letting that happen all over again. Think about it. VoIP/Vonage is just like Internet/AOL a few years back. Sure the LECs will have their own flavors but one independent company is taking the lead as the top proprietary service. Doesn't have to be this way guys, we've got to find a way to take the maverick mentality and polarize for the greater good. Otherwise, we're going nowhere fast in small, isolated silos and repeating history with VoIP and limiting our businesses every single day.

Today I finally got my package from DHL (courier company), the VoIP provider is Vonage, they are located in USA but they have just increased their services to Canada now. First of all, the voice quality is so good, if my ears are any better I could say the quality is MUCH higher than regular phone line. I love it. I’m paying 19.99 per month with 500 minutes of talk time (that only includes outbound calls), any inbound from Toronto is FREE! So, if any of you are out of town and still like to keep in touch with your love ones (family and...

The move comes as Vonage is gearing up via VARs to sell to the same small business market. But Vonage has a different spin with the SOHO and SMB offering. It's the folks doing the selling. The Vonage sales force are proven telecom and IT sales and installation companies (or are supposed to be). Pitney Bowes sells stamp machines and office related equipment. So just as P8 preceded Vonage into the consumer VoIP space, as they also did in the business space, they are hoping via this move to avoid having what happened in the residential market, where...

When I initially signed up with Vonage, almost a year ago.. I had to buy an ATA from them. This was no problem, because I didn’t have something like Asterisk in place. Their device performed beautifully for quite some time. Because the Vonage ATA and Asterisk is redundant, I called them to see if I could link Vonage directly into Asterisk. I can, but not using their unlimited plan, only using their $9.99 a month 500 minute “soft phone” plan. I found this most unacceptable and chose to suspend my account.

Digits 0-9 are standard stuff, but what are the * and # buttons for? And why are there letters above almost every digit? The configuration of these two buttons along with the letters above the digits is the same as you'd find on a telephone. Could there be a Vonage-like VoIP function in the works? If this is old news or has been explained elsewhere someone should tell me because I must have missed a press release somewhere.

Skype CEO Niklas Zennstrom announced the company plans to put out a VoWLAN phone, which will allow customers to connect to the Skype voice network via WiFi. Not too many specifics were given, other than that it’ll be out later this year. Let’s hope they inject it with a little more style than Vonage’s retro-cell aesthetic employed on the UTStarcom F1000, their first offering in the WiFi phone department.

Hmm, wonder if I should be concerned about my favorite VoIP company: Vonage? Om Malik says that they are on a spending tear:

Vonage is spending $21.829 million a month on Internet advertising alone, making it the second biggest money spender online.

Can you feel the excitement?! Only 32 hours before the CRTC decides whether it's going to regulate Internet telephony. Judging by recent analyst reports and news stories, regulating ILECs such as Bell and Telus could destroy their local phone businesses, while making them uncompetitive in the fast-emerging Internet telephony market. It's all a bit dramatic. It's not like Bell and Telus will be unable to offer Internet telephony. It's not like they won't be able to use their strong brands, customer relationships, and ability to offer multi-service...

If there's ever too much of a good thing, the VOIP market is a perfect illustration. With low barriers to entry into a market just starting to emerge, there is plenty of confusion among consumers about which service provider to use. Do you sign up with Vonage because they aggressively advertise and just raised US$200-million in private equity? Or do you go with your cableco because they offer VOIP within an attractive bundle? Stepping into this selection "void" is Whichvoip.com, which offers consumers an easy way to select the best VOIP service provider based on their specific requirements. A particularly nice feature is the Web site's advanced search capability that kicks back service providers that meet a consumer's personalized needs. Whichvoip.com also offers reviews and tools to select a VOIP SP for business users. I'm not sure if there are similar sites to Whichvoip.com but the Seattle-based company deserves kudos for recognizing an opportunity and rolling out a easy to use service.

As expected, Canada's telecom regulator has decided to regulate VOIP. It means ILECs such as Bell Canada and Telus Corp. will have to seek pricing approval from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commision to ensure they don't sell Internet telephony service below cost, while cablecos and third-party suppliers such as Vonage and Primus are free to price any way they want. Bell Canada, Sasktel and Telus have already said they will appeal the decision to the federal cabinet, and could pursue legal action. The bottom line is the CRTC...

Now that the CRTC has shackled ILECs when it comes to VOIP, Vonage Canada has decided it's time to crank up its marketing machine. This will see Vonage sponsor two high-profile events in Toronto this summer - the Molson Indy and the Distillery Jazz Festival. From a marketing/advertising perspective, it will be an interesting summer for the VOIP industry as existing players get more aggressive, and Rogers launches its cable telephony service in July. You have to expect Bell Canada will respond by promoting its own VOIP service - Bell Digital Voice...

This just in - Vonage is spending $21.829 million a month on Internet advertising alone, making it the second biggest money spender online. If you look at the number of customers they are adding - 15,000 a week or 60,000 a month, that makes it about $363 per customer in acquisition costs. Never mind that they are advertising like crazy on television and in the print media. If those figures are taken into account, then we could see final customer acquisition cost of around $400.

Recently, Vonage has released two different packaged plans in the UK this week. Vonage's main competitor in the VoIP market is BT, which could be forced to overlook their pay plans due to Vonage's entrance into the scene. When tested, the overall quality of the Vonage product was good but suffered from latency and a slow internet connection. Overall I believe that Vonage is very well capable of grabbing a large international market due to their marketing plans and price plans. According to VNUNet:

As for the landscape of VOIP as a whole; I believe it has a large future. Some of the comments from Citron included a roundup and analysis on the competitors in the market. He feels that skype is more of a phone card company, rather than a provider like vonage. I think that many heavy users would disagree. Mass market products always "seem" to work better on the outside, but this is usually in direct correlation to a few million dollars spent in advertising.

GadgetSpy in the UK thinks Vonage is setting out to be the world's first global VoIP Brand. I think Skype, even though I don't consider them a Telco, is in that position in most people's minds.

One other totally unrelated thing: have you noticed how violent the online Vonage ads are? Especially the one with the snowmobile guy flying across the road and crashing in what was surely a seriously injurious or even deadly crash? I hope that doesn't become a metaphor for Voice over Broadband providers like Vonage who are a little weak when it comes to a video offering. He-he, couldn't help myself. :-)

Vonage is just the latest company to participate in a “private IPO,” a way for a startup to raise capital for operations and for founders and executives to cash out of the startup without having to trade shares publicly. Internet advertising firm Fastclick and online poster merchant Art.com, two small but profitable companies, also went this route recently because their founders were eager to get paid without the time, expense, and uncertainty of going to the public markets. Michael Copeland writes in Business 2.0!

One of the most amazing aspects of Skype has been this unshakeable belief that the company does not have any network infrastructure, barring a few directory servers and other more web-related boxes. In the early days Vonage offered same arguments – we don’t have network infrastructure – thus we are more efficient. More subscribers signed on, network outages began, and well there is infrastructure. And increasingly it costs money.

For a long time Vonage and its apologists were claiming that they do not have any network infrastructure and are still able to offer voice service. It has stopped as the network failures became well known. Slowly it is becoming Skype’s turn.

Instead, the CRTC decided that it would regulate the large phone companies' prices in the VoIP market to prevent the large phone companies from deep rate pricing that would prevent VoIP competitors from entering the Canadian VoIP market. The CRTC's decision implied that their decision was at least until there is legitimate competition in VoIP phone services. Thus, the large phone companies' competitors, such as Vonage, Packet8, or the cable companies, will not have their VoIP prices regulated.

Now, it seems Skype has more and more competitiors including not only Vonage, the largest VoIP service provider, and also online messengers. SkypeJournal released a white-paper on using Skype as a server platform With its largest users base, Skype is easy to extend its service into different area, though the risk is that it may be hard to attract new customers as the vast diversity of user habits.

Boy, I wonder who they are talking about. As I wrote about today, Having the best product doesn’t mean anything, it is the best marketer than wins every battle. If Packet8 had access to the capital that Vonage has, they might be the market leader but until then they will be a niche player in VoIP services. The only exception to this is if the mainstream media were to pick up on this story and hammer it home for months, perhaps consumers would check out Packet8 before they pick up a Vonage box at Best Buy.

Vonage recently launched their VoIP telephony service in the UK. The pricing is attractive, but I am just as interested in the services. In particular, the voicemail, which includes email notification and web access. I am just so frustrated that on an ordinary carrier, like BT, you're either stuck with an answering machine or using their incredibly basic voicemail service (with zero notification options).

Of course, the cellular company would have to "support" handing off the call to the WiFi network, so perhaps the "cost-effective" statement has more to do with saving cellular companies money than it does saving the customer. I'll have to find out more. I'm also curious why they chose 802.11g instead of 802.11g/b (or 802.11g/a/b) since 802.11b is certainly more ubiquitous. But I am excited to see more dual/hybrid cell/WiFi VoIP technologies coming to market. The cell phone companies may not like it, but the VoIP revolution is...

Use google to search VoIP plus block, you will get a huge list of web links to different news. Among them, the most significant is a U.S. North carolina-based telecom company named Madison River Communications was fined $15,000 for blocking VoIP traffic. The regulator, Federal Communication Commission, proceeded the case brought by Vonage, the No.1 VoIP service provider in the U.S.

But VoIP is not service limited in one nation. Vonage also alleged Telmex, Mexico's national telephone monopoly, to deliberately slow down the speed of the broadband to users who access to Internet via Vonage's modem.

Vonage's spokesperson said it would make Vonage's service unusable. Andy in VoIPwatch also said there is a high possibility for British Telecom, the largest call provider in U.K to block the usage of Vonage and other VoIP providers as well.

A Florida couple are blaming Vonage for the death of their 3-month old daughter. Cheryl Waller called 911 when her daughter Julia stopped breathing. But she got a recorded message telling her the sheriff’s office was closed. She ran to a neighbour’s house to make the call but the delay proved fatal for her daughter.

Now that Vonage's US$200-million financing exercise is finally official, some interesting tidbits of information are starting to flow. According to CFO John Rego, Vonage plans to "easily" spend 90% of the money on advertising, which can only be good news for all those Web sites sporting Vonage banner ads these days. Despite the heavy focus on marketing, Rego expects the company will be profitable within the next 12 months as it adds more than 75,000 new customers a month.

Another really cool thing is the virtual phone numbers. You can get extra numbers that ring the same phone, but they are local numbers to any area code you want. So if I live in Dallas and have family in New York, I can get a local phone number here and there. That way my family in New York can call a local number (free) and talk to me! Vonage charges $4.99/month for that. I’m not sure about the others.

I use Vonage b/c that’s what I was told about first and it was one of the first. There are others and I’m sure they have their strengths, but Vonage has the cheapest base option at the time I did my research.

Ben Charmy thinks after investing “$1.6 billion into VoIP during the past four years, it’s time for venture capital firms to look elsewhere to invest such large sums.” Sun Rocket is looking to raise another $15 million, but even that may not be enough. Vonage envy is sweeping Silicon Valley. Oh I think the dumb money is only getting started!

My tongue was in my cheek when I wrote this post about Vonage being the first billion dollar VC investment.

Must-read post from Om Malik on Vonage's recent fundraising. He apparently believes, as do I, that only the Greater Fool Theory can justify this amount of $$$.

VoIP companies like Vonage are growing rapidly, with their promise of nifty new features and lower monthly phone bills. Vonage, one of many Internet telephone service providers, says that about 1500 people sign up for its service alone per month. But some computer security experts say that, just as with wireless networking, VoIP’s rapid-fire adoption will be closely followed by revelations of security vulnerabilities and electronic attacks.

Red Herring reports Vonage will be setting aside $10-million dollars in a campaign to provide 911 services to its customers. The first of such plans will be rolling out over the next six-months with Verizon at the tune of $1-million dollars a month rental fee.

As I had hinted at earlier this week, Vonage did go out and raise new money - $200 million or so, but its not from venture capitalists. Instead the company is doing a private sale of securities, according to SEC filings. Since its a paper filing, no details as yet, on who is buying into the company. Reuters says the company has now raised a total of $408 million. Maybe some of the money will be used to keep this guy happy? By the way, he is showing up as the number one search result for Vonage and SEC.gov on Google.

Is it just me that has a sneaking suspicion that a lot of people will end up lossing money on Vonage in the long run? All they need to do is trick Time Warner into buying them . . .

Evan has written up his bad experience with Vonage, which he was using to call India. I posted earlier about my bad experience with Skype, also calling India. What is interesting is Evan's (understandable) comment that:

One has to wonder if it represents the quality of Vonage's service, but since I was calling India, I gave them a break on that.

Thanks to the recent newsletter from Vonage, I found out about their Click-2-Call software. This is a cool little application that sits in the system tray (Windows only, sorry). When you highlight a phone number on your computer and press the hotkey (F6 by default), it first dials your default number (if you have more than one, you can set one as default), then you pick it up and it connects you to the selected number. Cool!

Even as the speculation around Vonage IPO continues, an enterprising Vonage customer (Matthew Brown 100253XXXX) is trying to sell www.vonageIPO.com on Ebay. His reserve is $998. You can bid for the domain if interested.

InternetNews.com has an interesting interview with John Malloy, managing general partner with BlueRun Ventures (formerly known as Nokai Venture Partners). In particular, he talks about the firm's decision to invest in SunRocket's latest round at a time when Vonage continues to grow and new competition is entering the VOIP market. In explaining BlueRun's decision, he talks about how SunRocket's executive team comes from MCI, which means they are consumer marketers. "Now that the technology is ready, it's all about value to the end-user. It's alternative...

There has been lot of talk today about what's driving VOIP. The industry is naturally excited about the technology and its potential to drive adoption and revenue. The problem is there seems to be disappointment about the rate of growth. The main driver continues to be price rather than features. AOL Canada's Craig Wallace said research suggests the primary driver for early adopters is price as 81% of VOIP early-adopters have jumped on the bandwgon to save money. Primus' Matt Stein said features need to stay front and centre to make a VOIP mainstream...

Qwest Communications has agreed to give Vonage access to its 911 infrastructure. The deal will allow 911 calls from Vonage customers to travel over Qwest's emergency calling infrastructure in 14 states, enabling the calls to proceed directly to emergency dispatchers. News of the arrangement appeared in a letter Vonage sent to the FCC earlier this week.

There is a school of thought which believes that Skype’s value added services, SkypeIn, SkypeOut and Skype Voice Mail could become a major nightmare for Vonage. Allan Tumolillo, COO of Probe Financial Associates is one such person and he believes that, “Skype now has a product set similar to Vonage and cable and telco providers. What is most important, though, is that Skype’s product set allows us to examine what the likely cost to a subscriber will be from VoIP providers.” He believes that others will have to lower their...

More trouble for Vonage? Looks like Michigan state Attorney General Mike Cox is threatening to go after the company for “allegedly misleading consumers about the company’s 911 service.” His complaint is the same as Texas - Vonage is not making it clear to the customers that they don’t have access to traditional 911. Cox laments the fact that Vonage 911 calls don’t go to emergency dispatchers, instead are routed to a call center, which may or may-not be answered outside of regular business hours.

Reports about VOIP traffic being blocked by network operators are becoming more common in wake of Telmex customers complaining their telephony service is being degraded. In the United Arab Emirates, Internet users are complaining they have been unable to access Skype.com to buy SkypeOut minutes. The culprit seems to be Etisalat, the UAE's only ISP. In the U.S., there have been reports that Vonage's service is being blocked by Clearwire, while Madison River was fined $15K by the FCC after Vonage filed a complaint. In Canada, the major broadband operators...

At home I have a Vonage phone line instead of a standard land line. As of lately, I hate it. It is sucking really, really, bad. When I move I'm going to be getting a real phone line and spending $49.95 a month for unlimited long distance instead of the normal $24.95 that I am now. That's how annoyed I am at them right now.

Ever since I hooked up my Vonage phone the amount of time I spend on my cell phone has dropped dramatically. Since 1998 my cell carrier has been Sprint PCS. I like the quality of their service and have never had trouble using my phone during the dozens and dozens of trips I have taken in the past seven years. Since I was not using my cell phone as much as I used to I realized I was just throwing money down the drain, continuing to pay $50+/month for 500 minutes. My last three usage statements show I've barely used 200 minutes a month. I figured it was time to call Sprint and change my plan.

Alexa.com is a great site to use to monitor how much traffic sites get. I noticed recently that Teltel, a company I have written about before in an entry titled: Teltel A Skype Killer? had a huge drop in web traffic from a 3-month average of around 10,000 to a one-day average of 31,381. I didn’t have a chance to ask the company the reason and to be honest it could even be a problem with Alexa causing this drop. Who knows? What I did do was to compare their traffic to Vonage, Skype and Packet8.

I signed up for a VoIP account with Vonage--unlimited calling for $25/month. Vonage promptly sent me a LinkSys router, assigned me a temporary telephone number, set up my 911 emergency service, and started the process of having our existing home telephone number moved from AT&T to Vonage.

I have liked the Sipura products since they first came out a few years ago. The SPA products are widely used by VoIP service providers (Vonage, etc) for their feature set, flexibility, and low cost. We have been testing out Sipura adapters on the Kuppa…

There are a couple of things to be aware of when you switch over to VoIP phones. One thing I discovered the other day with mine is that I am unable to call toll free numbers that the Canadian Government use. The only one that does work is the 1-800-O'Canada number. The reason for this is that the majority of the other 1-800 numbers in use are 'regional' 1-800 numbers and the 1-800-O'Canada number is a national 1-800 number. Now my VoIP provider, Vonage ties into the regular telephone system somewhere in toxic central Canada so that when I try and...

"...Panagopolis Pizza uses a regional 1-800 number that doesn't work on the Vonage system but at least they offer a local number so I can still order pizza..."

Anyhow..., near as I can figure the savings alone easily outweigh the minor annoyance. Oh yeah..., Panagopolis Pizza uses a regional 1-800 number that doesn't work on the Vonage system but at least they offer a local number so I can still order pizza. The Government of Canada claim they don't have local numbers, only 1-800 numbers. I think by now we all know how much truth to attach to anything that comes by way of Ottawa.

I have been hearing these stories off and on from people, in them saying Vonage has terrible customer service. The worse part is that it appears they have outsourced their customer service to some foreign country and the sound quality of those calls is real bad. This is not a good start for a company that is supposedly in the VOIP business. [EVHEAD]

So now I have to do some research and find out which VoIP service is the best out there. I know everyone out there has heard of Vonage. But I been getting snail mail flyers from another company called SunRocket. SunRocket seems to offer a really good price plan at $199 for a whole year of service. But I got to hold off and do some research on the quality of the service and quality of their customer service before I drop two benjamins on the service.

Simon asks about VoIP solution � so here is my tip: Systinet has been using Vonage for cca two years and we are satisfied. Using Vonage saves us thousands of dollars a month as we have one office in Czech and the other in USA. I personally have one Vonage phone at my house in Prague (having the US number of course). I remember only few (three?) major interruptions of the service during the period we are using it.

However, it looks like the Vonage days are over. Currently, we are removing Vonage phones as we don't need them any more. Why? Because Czech and US office already runs Asterisk (opensource Linux PBX). This solution is unbeatable � just perfect! I expect I'll remove my home Vonage phone this month...

Well - just for personal use, the Vonage phone is really good choice. But if you convince your employer to use Asteriks, then you'll get even better solution. ;-)

Through its participating Security Dealers, Alarm.com will offer Vonage customers a reliable, phone-line-independent security system that transmits alarm signals from a customer's home or business wirelessly to a central monitoring station, which can then contact local authorities in the event of an emergency.

Engadget has a review of the UTStarcom F1000, Vonage’s first WiFi phone. I want it.

It was a good run, but Vonage may soon have to pass the torch when it comes to being top dog in the VoIP business. In a recent study, many analysts are foreseeing the rise of other companies, and Vonage is not going to be able to keep up. While they have been the poster child for the VoIP community, many larger more able cable companies are rising to the task. With AOL and COX ready to roll out their own VoIP services, their ability to package deals with TV, Internet, and VoIP will bring a great amount of savings to the average...

04:15 PM in Vonage | Permalink

New post in Telephony Online has a leading broadband analyst predicting that at before the year is out, two VoIP-over-cable providers could have more subscribers than Vonage.

I think Time Warner and Cablevision can take the lead in VoIP from Vonage this year, Teresa Mastrangelo, principal analyst with Broadbandtrends.com, tells Telephony Online’s Carol Wilson. The cable companies are being very smart in making their VoIP look like traditional phone service so that customers don’t have to make any extra effort to change services.

Well, could be. Vonage has more than 600,000 subscribers, and Time Warner Cable started the year out with 220,000. Cablevision has more than 222225,000.

TWC, at least, could pass Vonage if it turns out that Vonage has gotten its share of early adopters - and that the next phase of propective VoIP subscribers would opt for a more familiar brand.

But see, that’s why Vonage ads are everywhere. They know that to get past the early adopters and become a mass-market play, they have to be more familiar to Joe and Mary SOHO.

ZDNet’s Russell Shaw poses the question about who will have the most Internet telephony subscribers by the end of this year. Vonage currently has a large lead with over 600K customers but cablecos such as CableVision and Time-Warner are starting to cl…

Ronald Gruia has an intriguing posting about how reliable VOIP needs to be in light of outages at Vonage and 8x8 recently. Does VOIP needs to have five 9s reliability to become a mainstream technology? Or can it thrive with slightly lower quality if it provides users with reduced costs and more features. For the timing being, I suspect bleeding/leading edge consumers - residential more than corporate - will accept less-than-perfect...

Tech Daily (subscription required) reports today that the Texas AG's consumer fraud suit against Vonage may be spreading. The AG's spokeman stated: [s]everal states have expressed an interest in the suit,..." I blogged about the stretch that Vonage's E-911 disclosures constituted consumer fraud here. Randy May responded to that...

If the Texas AG's suit catches on, I do fear we are looking at a de facto E-911 mandate on VoIP, not just better disclosure. I went back to my Vonage "welcome materials" for my own account. Predictably in our litigation-senstitive world, Vonage is very clear about the service's E-911 limitations and sign-up requirements. Thus, there seems to me a very tenuous "consumer fraud" basis for the complaint.

But this will probably not stop AG's on a morally-charged public safety crusade. The politics are easy. Big, laudatory headlines of public-protecting AG filing the suit, followed by one of two outcomes. First, and most likely, Vonage folds up quickly making some token payment and agrees to do what it is already doing: make its VoIP E-911 systems more robust. The alternate outcome would have Vonage winning the suit because their disclosures do not come close to constituting fraud. But that is a small headline and years away.

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference AG's Gone Wild! A Gathering Storm for Vonage?:

I raise the issue of VoIP and port blocking, because there are many enterprise IT managers currently investigating VoIP alternatives for mobile environments. With the advent of Skype, VONAGE and other IP telephony services, it is clear that a number of options will be available for companies of all sizes.

Clearwire, a wireless broadband company backed by Craig McCaw and just entering US markets, has caused a minor stir by saying up front that it will block third-party VoIP applications like Vonage. Clearwire's terms of service disclose this fact that they can restrict high-bandwidth applications.

It is therefore unclear whether Clearwire needs to restrict all bandwidth-heavy uses, or only third-party bandwidth-heavy uses in favor of its own, integrated offerings. If it's the latter case, this would facially violate one of former Chairman Powell's Four Net Freedoms, or the stronger (proposed) regulations for "net neutrality." ["Four 'Net Freedoms" sounds vaguely Maoist, doesn't it? Now that he's moved on I can allege it: Michael Powell, crypto-Maoist!] Under a 'Net Freedom analysis, if Clearpoint offered its own integrated VoIP offering and to ensure quality of service or allow better price differentiation for the whole offering, that would be a slightly different case than if all applications were subject to the same bandwidth restrictions. Still another case would be if Clearwire wanted payment from the applications provider -- in this case Vonage -- to carry its application.

So, let Clearwire, be Clearwire! As a Vonage customer, addicted to its toll-bridging capabilities, I would never subscribe -- but that's why markets serve consumers better than uniform, government mandated offerings.

There have been rumors circulating that Vonage is entertaining an IPO. More interesting are the circumstances surrounding this potential offering. The company’s CEO, Jeff Citron, got a swift kick in the nads from the SEC a few years ago for some illegal activity and was ordered to pay a handsome fine; some have speculated that the SEC might have a problem with Citron being on the board of a publicly traded company,...

As Diaz points out, AOL will bring VoIP to the mainstream mass market, something that really was started when AT&T launched their Olympic campaign last summer, and to some extent with what Vonage did online to bring SIP based VoIP telephony to the early adopter and trend setter market.

There are some drawbacks with AOL's CallWays product. First is you have to get a number in your geographic area, unlike what Vonage and all the rest offer. This is tied to their E-911 offering, something AOL is making a big deal about.

Second, their pricing is on par with the offerings from Vonage, AT&T and others so from a pricing perspective, they're no less less in cost.