That’s gonna leave a mark. Apparently Vonage infringed upon six of Sprint Nextel’s patents, which is a big, expensive no-no. Sprint will receive $69.5 million plus 5 percent of Vonage’s future revenue.
Earlier this year, Vonage lost a cool $58 million, plus 5.5% future royalties to Verizon. That now seems somewhat tame. All told, that brings the grand total to $127.5 million plus 10.5% of all future revenue that Vonage is going to have to dish out. Guess who might be picking up some or all of that bill? Vonage customers.
I would like to try to say this as delicately as possible. I understand that many of you out there use Vonage and are happy with the service. I understand that Vonage is a better deal than a traditional phone line and that there are many fine people who work for Vonage.
That being said, I don’t like Vonage one bit. I won’t shed a single tear because of this recent lawsuit. As a former customer, I had a terrible time with its customer service and it took me about a dozen phone calls to cancel my account. I was finally able to do so by telling them that I was moving to Australia to study aboriginal people and would be out in the middle of nowhere with no access to any sort of broadband internet service. I’m not kidding, either.
I’m not a fan of Vonage, but neither am I a fan of patents.
I think my mom still has Vonage. I’ll ask her to monitor the bill and see if anything changes or else I’m going to have to start calling to change. What ye’ recommend as an alt? Live in the Northeast.
Well, I guess Sprint is joining those whose business plan is based upon profitability through litigation.
If you can’t offer a product that is quality for a value, I guess just sue those who do.
One might think that VoIP for consumers is down for the count – with the Sunrocket meltdown and now this legal mess with Vonage leaves one pining for a provider who has been around and won’t get knocked out the box. I asked my IT geek friend what they liked and they told me about Net2Phone. Unlike almost all the other guys – this company has been at this for about 10 years and they are well funded (big IDT owns them). He also said that now because of all the uncertainty – they are running a special try/ buy offer. Try them for 3 months free and then it is just $19.95/ month – plus you get to keep your phone number. It’s better than paying the big telco’s lots of $$$ every month.
Also—I have a lot of family overseas and have been blown away by the options for international calling – not only really cheap international rates – but you can get a local phone number in a huge number of countries. Most of my family is based in Brazil – they dial a local call to my Brazil number from Net2Phone and it gets to me here.