Did you guys see the new VoIP price war that T-Mobile decided to wage against the voice over IP companies out there? T-Mobile is now offering to give you VoIP home phone service for only $10.00 per month if you buy one of their cell phone packages that costs more than $39.95 per month. Since Vonage is charging $25.00 per month, if you are going to get cell phone service anyway, then it looks like T-Mobile is the way to go. Grab a T-Mobile plan today!

The latest 10-Q Quarterly Reports for Vonage are out. I’m not really going to say anything about them, I’m just going to let this set of numbers spark your interest enough to go read the report for yourself.

December 31, 2006 183,201
September 30, 2007 (62,929 )


Read the rest of the Vonage report here.

With Vonage taking care of all of their patent infringements, and their increased profitability, it sure looks like Vonage is on it’s way back from the brink of bankruptcy. Their 3rd quarter financial report for 2007 came out today, and their revenues were up 30% over the same quarter last year. With this type of growth, and the fact that they are doing better at keeping the money they do get, they might actually be a profitable company by next year.

Here are Vonage’s 3rd quarter financials

Author: Spiderman

I got an email alert this morning that Sprint/Nextel had settled their patent dispute with Vonage. Wow, that was fast! It now looks like Vonage may be around awhile longer, at least until Verizon gets them back in court.

Here’s the the press release that I got this morning:

Sprint Nextel and Vonage Settle Patent Dispute

Settlement Terms Include One-Time Payment to Sprint and Licensing Agreement that Provides Vonage with Use of Sprint Patents

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. and HOLMDEL, N.J., Oct 08, 2007 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ — Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) and Vonage (NYSE: VG) today announced that they have settled their ongoing patent dispute and entered into a licensing arrangement under Sprint’s Voice over Packet (“VOP”) patent portfolio. On September 25, 2007, a jury in the U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kan., found that Vonage had infringed six Sprint patents. The settlement agreement resolves all claims related to this dispute.

In addition, Sprint has agreed to license Vonage its VOP portfolio, which comprises more than 100 patents covering different methods, components and systems that efficiently connect telephone calls between a regular telephone network and a packet-switched network such as the Internet.

“We are pleased to resolve our dispute with Sprint and enter into a productive future relationship,” said Sharon O’Leary, Vonage chief legal officer.

“We view this settlement and licensing agreement as a validation of the strength and breadth of our patent portfolio,” said Harley Ball, Sprint Nextel’s vice president of intellectual property. “This is an affirmation of Sprint’s research and development and a testament to the rich history of innovation at Sprint Nextel.

About Sprint Nextel

Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and government users. Sprint Nextel is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including two robust wireless networks serving 54 million customers at the end of the second quarter 2007; industry-leading mobile data services; instant national and international walkie-talkie capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. For more information, visit www.sprint.com.

About Vonage

Vonage (NYSE: VG) is a leading provider of digital phone services with 2.45 million subscriber lines. Our award-winning technology enables anyone to make and receive phone calls with a touch tone telephone almost anywhere a broadband Internet connection is available. We offer feature-rich and cost- effective communication services that offer users an experience similar to traditional telephone services. Our Residential Premium Unlimited and Small Business Unlimited calling plans offer consumers unlimited local and long distance calling, and popular features like call waiting, call forwarding and voicemail — for one low, flat monthly rate. For more information about Vonage’s products and services, please visit www.vonage.com.

Vg-a

SOURCE Vonage

http://www.vonage.com

With over 100 VoIP patents from Sprint to choose from, they should now be able to really kick butt in the VoIP world. While I’ve always had problems with Vonage just taking what they want and moving on, now that they are paying at least some of the people who own the technology, I hope they make it. At least for the sake of their 2.5 million users.

Author Greg Anliker
I’m really surprised that no one called me on my spin of the Vonage story below. You do realize of course that they keep losing and are eventually going to go bankrupt, right?

I think that if you have a Vonage account, you might want to talk to another VoIP company now to see about getting a deal, and moving your account, before you wake up one morning and read that Vonage isn’t there any more.

If I was Vonage, I would sign up as a Packet8 affiliate, then just move all of my customers over to them. If you figure that Vonage could get at least $50 per customer, and probably $60, that would get Vonage’s investors $125,000,000 to $150,000,000 of their hard earned dollars back. LOL

Author: Greg Anliker:
Vonage announced that they have won, at least temporarily, their patent suite with Verizon. Verizon sued Vonage earlier this year and won 58 million dollars, plus interest, and an injunction against Vonage signing up any new customers using any of the three stolen patents that they got caught using. The injunction was dropped for existing customers using the stolen technology, as long as Vonage made quarterly payment of 5.5% of their bill to Verizon for any existing customers who were still using the technology stolen from Verizon. (I love saying “Stolen Technology”, it sounds so “Cold War-ish”. LOL)

Here’s some of what the Vonage press release had to say:

On September 26, 2007, the CAFC (United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit) partially remanded the jury verdict that the Company infringed three Verizon patents. The CAFC remanded the infringement verdict on the 880 patent and affirmed the verdict on the 574 and 711 patents. Further, the CAFC vacated the entire award of $58 million in damages and the 5.5% royalty. The CAFC remanded the case to the U.S. District Court and directed that the court retry those aspects of the original case.

The press release also said that they were going to see if they could win the Sprint lawsuit that they lost a couple of days ago. If they can, then they won’t have to pay out any more money and may still be able to survive as the biggest stand alone VoIP company around.

To those of you who think I’m being unfair to Vonage when I keep saying “Stolen Technology”, you need to remember that they stole patented technology from Sprint and Verizon, and then also used a stolen customer list from Sunrocket to try to move customers after the “Death of Sunrocket” in July. As far as I’m concerned, since two juries of my peers have said that they were thieves, then they are thieves, even if bought and paid for judges throw out those verdicts.

On that note, go sign up for Packet8 or JoiPhone. LOL

Rachael King has a great article over at BusinessWeek.com that gives a ton of good information on what is going on in the broadband phone industry right now. While I’ve been comparing Vonage with Sunrocket in my expectations that Vonage will go down the tube next, Ms. King has actually dug around and come up with the reasons this will probably happen.

According to Ms. King’s article, the people over at TeleGeography.com say that Comcast overtook Vonage back in March as the leader in VoIP customers. She also has information from other sources pointing out that the cable companies are going to dominate this industry because they can just bundle voip with their other products and offer specials that the stand alone VoIP companies can’t touch. They also already have a built in base of subscribers that they can leverage for next to nothing, instead of having to spend a ton on advertising.

According to the article, Vonage was actually spending $390.00 to sign up a customer who only paid them around $340.00 per year. Unless Vonage’s customers stay at least 14 months on average, then that is definitely a losing proposition for Vonage and it’s stockholders.

If you are a Vonage customer, you really need to read this article. If you have anything to add about the stand alone voip companies vs. the cable companies, or the fact that Sunrocket and Vonage were spending more money than they were bring in, and the fact that Vonage still may be, drop me a line and let me know.

Thanks,

Spiderman

Is moving from the number one voip disaster to the number two voip disaster really a good idea? We all know about how Sunrocket crashed and burned this week, leaving 200,000 broadband phone customers scrambling to find a new phone carrier. But, if you are one of those 200,000 customers, should you really sign up with the company that looks like it’s going down the tubes next?

Vonage’s stock prices have been way down, and if the court ordered fines and their ban on recruiting new customers ends up being upheld, there won’t be a Vonage anymore either. Not to mention the bad publicity they are getting from Michael Wolf over at eHomeUpgrade.com for their lack of customer support. (more…)