VoIP Provider Vonage Planning IPO?

SixDimensionalArray writes "The rumor mill is exploding with stories that large voice-over-ip (VoIP) provider Vonage is planning an initial public offering to raise nearly $600 million. This information is interesting coming out not long after Google's recent release of Google Talk, which overs instant messaging/VoIP services PC-to-PC as well as a surge in marketing by VoIP providers such as Covad and Skype. Could this be yet another bubble?"

Comments

Maybe they need the money to get some engineers...

[b0r1s]

Who are smart enough not to use TFTP to download configuration and images, knowing full well that major internet operators block TFTP, and have for years.

Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[TheComputerMutt.ca]

I know that it's a growing market, but with the afforability of cell phones and free PC versions, is there really a large enough market to sustain all of this?

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[MAdMaxOr]

While $50 / month for an average cell phone plan is affordable, it's still a lot more than I'd pay for VOIP service bundled on my hypothetical Google nationwide WiMax plan. I'd switch.

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this 'affordability of cell phones' that you speak of? Do you mean to say that you know of a provider who is not out to screw their customers? That will be the day!

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cell phones cost a lot per month if you want to have the option of using them reasonably. You also have to pay for all calls, even an 800 number.

They don't get great reception everywhere, and you can't have multiple handsets with the same number.

I pay $16.94 a month for Vonage, and that is my only phone. I use about 100 minutes paid and 100 minutes free.

VoIP software is a joke. I need a phone that my credit card company, or car repair shop can call, and need to be able to call them for whatever reason.

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[TheComputerMutt.ca]

I'm looking at Virgin Mobile, they don't seem to be too bad. Of course, the only reason I'm actually considering them is because they have good ringtones available. :P

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[w98]

I use Vonage and love it ... I have a virtual phone number based in Toronto that my family can call and it forwards to Los Angeles at no extra charge. On top of that, the feature to forward to another phone number (ie: my cell phone) for free if I'm not home to answer it there, is well worth the price. Between the cell phone and Vonage, I have no need for a land-based phone line any more to talk to my family up north. Cingular charges me $0.69/minute to call Canada, so I just call my family and say "hey, call me back on my Toronto number" and wait for my cell phone to ring.

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[evildogeye]

There is a large enough market to sustain the growing VOIP market because this is essentially the same market that supports dozens of cell phone and local and long distance companies.

As a small business owner, I can say that Skype and other VOIP services have been a godsend and I welcome Google to the game.

We have employees in China, Australia, England, and the United States, who all talk for free on Skype. In addition, I have 3 SkypeIn phone numbers: One in China, one in England, and one in the United States (Total cost: $15 per line per 3 months). Someone in England can dial a local number to reach us, and it's free for me and free for them. On top of that, they don't even know that I'm not in England. I had to have a 3rd party company forward my Australian phone calls, because SkypeIn doesn't work in Australia yet. At a rate of about $1 per hour (.017 Euros per minute), I can call Chinese, Australian, British, or American Customers.

The signal quality can be a little low. I have one customer who refers to us as the "bad reception guys." Some days are worse than others.

As much as I like Skype, I'm looking forward to jumping on the Google Talk bandwagon because I'm certain they will offer superior service to Skype.

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[timeOday]

Vonage has one big problem, which is they don't allow direct VOIP calls - you can only make and get calls from the POTS.

In a way this make sense for them, as there really is no need for a middleman like Vonage for direct VOIP calls, but as more people get VOIP they are going to want to make VOIP calls without paying a middleman. I already do.

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[dnoyeb]

Vonage is The 8hit. I have used it for just under a month. This will be the first IPO I actually try to get in on. (If it doesent get insane. im not stupid after all)

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[Alex P Keaton in da]

You can do even better- Phone fart them. Call, let it ring once, and hang up. That can be your signal to call you. I used to do the same thing when I was in middle school and didn't have a quarter- When my parents got the phone fart, they knew I needed a ride.

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was in the military back in the 90's, the pay phones has an automatted voice system for calling collect. When I was away from home, I used to call my wife collect and for the name I'd say the last 4 numbers of phone number I was calling from. She would decline the charge and call me back from our home phone. Of course the base pay phones allowed incoming calls and the first 3 digits were all the same so it worked out great. At the time cell phones were not popular and probably over $2/minute and calling cards were still in the 30 to 50 cent a minute range. My home long distance was a bargin at about 10 cents a minute.

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[JPriest]

The problem with this is that it opens a huge security hole. If any random SIP client can make a calls directly to your phone adapter then what is to prevent abuse?

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[larry bagina]

take a look at your phone habits. If you're on the low-end of the phone usage scale, a prepaid plan (like virgin or tmobile) can be a very good deal (and a lot cheaper than POTS).

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[dnoyeb]

Thats a very good point. But I don't think its that big of a problem as long as Vonage keeps the price low.

Over time people may come to realize the simplicity of the service Vonage is actually providing. Nevertheless, they are providing a necessary service. You can say its akin to dynamicDNS. But it works, it works well, and they are not gouging. Plus E911 may actually become a strength of a service like Vonage.

I think they have lots of methods to make themselves usefull to the public.

The bigest problem Vonage has will be one they don't have yet. The shareholder excuse being available to greedy Management...

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[JDizzy]

This would mean Vonaged would have to support an uber sip server that was aware of the 3rd party voip node. Vonage's infrastructure doesn't support that for obvious reasons, mainly they are a business, and not a free IM/chat service like google-talk.

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[timeOday]

This would mean Vonaged would have to support an uber sip server that was aware of the 3rd party voip node.

No, all Vonage would have to do is quit locking down their customers' SIP boxes, so they could accept incoming connections from wherever. Vonage would not have to support non-Vonage calls in any way, they just need to get out of the way.

Of course you can already receive VOIP calls without Vonage (or any other "provider") using a separate SIP box, but you'd rather not have to answer a different phone depending on who's calling. The solution currently is to use anybody but Vonage, but so far Vonage has the most coverage if you want a phone number in your local area code.

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[shokk]

I figure VOIP will have to drop to 1/2 to 1/3 its current price before it becomes attractive. With cell plans that give gobs of free minutes, who needs another phone number?

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[NardofDoom]

One word: PhoneGnome.

It's VoIP for people who don't want VoIP. It plugs in between your phone and the POTS line, with an Ethernet cord shoved in another port. When you dial a number it checks to see if that number is SIP or PSTN. If it's SIP, it sends the call over the Internet for free. If not, it goes over the traditional phone line. It works when the power's off, 911 is still the same, and you can set it to route all long distance calls over a VoIP long distance provider for 1.5/min.

There's a referral program, and the box only costs $120 with no monthly fees. The more people who have them, the less calls get routed over the PSTN and the cheaper your phone bill gets.

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[shokk]

So some sort of on-screen reverse IP lookup service like CallerID is required in order to identify callers. After all, once CLID came out, crank calls volume went down drastically.

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[turtled]

I have had Vonage for over 1 year now, and I love it. I pay $26 a month for unlimited everything, long distance in the US, voice mail, caller id, everything just like a real land line. I had Verizon telephone, and their monthly bill was $87 for the same exact package. SBC/Ameritec was $72 at my previous house. Vonage VoIP uses your existing phones. I don't want to get up and go to my computer everytime I want to make a Gtalk call. I know it's no cell phone, either, but, your normal house line is not a cell phone, either.

If anyone wants a Vonage invite, which is like 2 months free or something, email me (dmannjr AT gmail D0T com) =)

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[pizzaman100]

I did the same thing back in school. But I did it through High School until I got the Pinto my senior year :)

The pay phones in my area were set up so that the caller could hear the other end but they could not here until you paid. So I'd call the folks, they'd answer, and know it was me when there was silence. :)

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[randm.ca]

I'm too cheap to download their ring tones. I mean when I can buy a whole song from iTunes for $0.99, it's really hard to justify a low quality 15 second clip for $4.00!

I'll bet Virgin makes as much if not more money off the sale of ring tones than it does on the phone cards!

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[mesach]

"The more people who have them, the less calls get routed over the PSTN and the cheaper your phone bill gets."

Except for the fact that a simple POTS line with long distance can cost upwards of $70 a month. Thats why I use VoIP. When I moved a year ago, I looked into it, and found out I could get Vonage and a cell phone for what SBC wanted for me to get a phone with the monthly long distance minutes still on top of that.

Re:Is VoIP Reall That Big?

[Lord Flipper]

how about someone who wants to call all 50 states and canada 24/7 for $25/month? and two cents a nminute to paris, for example? try that on yer cel phone pal

Lots of money to be made

[Eightyford]

The telecommunications industry is huge, and there is a ton of money to be made. That being said though, it's so easy (comparitively) to get into this business that it would be foolish to invest in a single company. I think it will be just like what happened to AOL. People will go with the cheaper provider eventually, and there is just too many competitors (there will be many).

I wuv vonage

[Anonymous Coward]

With vonage you can call anyone, anywhere free. With most other VoIP systems like google talk, etc, the receiver needs special software. I'd me more interested in Vonage stock than google stock at this time.

--
http://stoopidme.org/
Bringing the world together through our common bond: our stupidity

Re:I wuv vonage

[gandell]

With vonage you can call anyone, anywhere free. With most other VoIP systems like google talk, etc, the receiver needs special software. I'd me more interested in Vonage stock than google stock at this time. Free? You pay nearly 25 bucks a month for this service. This, frankly, is the problem. I use a smaller voip provider that lets me call within the state for 10 bucks and the country (and about 10 other countries, including Canada and the UK) for about 20 bucks.

Vonage has multiple pricing platforms, but the price needs to come down on VOIP for people to completely embrace it. After all, unlike a cell phone, it's not based on battery, but broadband. It's only portable if you're staying somewhere with broadband (and while I agree that broadband is almost everywhere, you can't very well use your voip phone while traveling down the interstate). At least, not yet.

Re:I wuv vonage

[Anonymous Coward]

Vonage needs to come down? You should look at the price of Comcast, $40 per month!

Re:I wuv vonage

[dnoyeb]

Zyxel has a VOIP over wifi handheld phone. So you can walk into a bookstore or starbucks and your all set. Of course I cant imagine how this woudl work over a NATed IP address where the port can only be used once...

Re:I wuv vonage

[brandorf]

From what I remember from the recent slashdot article, the Zyxel phones don't work with WIFI systems that require you to log in, so you can't use them at a starbucks or similar, only on open WIFI systems or for ones which you have the WEP key.

Re:I wuv vonage

[FictionPimp]

I think vonage is priced well, for under 30.00 a month I can do what it cost me almost 60.00 a month to do with SBC.

Thats a savings of over 50%.

Re:I wuv vonage

[Gunzour]

How is $25/month expensive? Compared to a $60/month POTS line from Verizon, it's dirt cheap.

I hope it is true

[Anonymous Coward]

so that the holders of the common stock can vote on removing that FUCKING ANNOYING noise they have on their tv commercials.

Re:I hope it is true

[Anonymous Coward]

WHOO HOO WHOO HOO HOO!

*gunshot*

Good Lord. What's with that ugly ass orange colour also?

Exploding Rumor Mill?

[richdun]

So, wait, does this mean we don't have to put up with ridiculously speculative stories about things that "might" happen in someone's mind but have absolutely no business being called "news" now that the rumor mill has exploded?

What's that you say? Oh, this is Slashdot?

Ah, never mind then. Nothing for you to see here, please move along.

Re:Exploding Rumor Mill?

[strider44]

But rumours are relevant, especially when they are involved in the stockmarket. Whether they are relevant to geeks and nerds on the other hand...

TechCom and the future

[LordKazan]

I heard a story on NPR about VoIP just this week and they talked to a guy from a company that specializes in tech investments - specifical in figuring out what is a good investment.

He said they refer to technologies like VoIP as "TechCom" and fully expect it to replace Telecom as time goes on - and the market of incompatable technologies is just because the technology is in it's infancy [VHS vs Beta, Laserdisk, VCD, DVD, Blu-ray vs HD-DVD would make a string of good examples] and that overtime they'll eventually all become cross-compatable.

He pointed out previous advances in communications technology anymore - specifical AT&T - anyone remember what the second T is? American Telephone and Telegraph - who uses a Telegraph anymore? Exactly: NOBODY.

VoIP is the infancy of the next generation of communications technology - not a bubble.

Re:TechCom and the future

[loid_void]

Do you have any thoughts on a company such as Vonage being pushed out of its market by the cable providers that carry Vonage on there networks? There has been that speculation.

Re:TechCom and the future

[strider44]

But this isn't a totally new revolution, like being able to literally talk instead of just type, it's actually giving the same service albeit at a cheaper cost and perhaps a higher quality. Chances are the users of VoIP won't even know it's happening; do you realise that most long distance conversations using a normal telephone are actually done using VoIP simply because it's cheaper for the telephone company?

I wouldn't get out the doomsday hats for the telecom companies yet, they'll adapt as always.

Re:TechCom and the future

[ninjamonkey]

He pointed out previous advances in communications technology anymore - specifical AT&T - anyone remember what the second T is? American Telephone and Telegraph - who uses a Telegraph anymore? Exactly: NOBODY. VoIP is the infancy of the next generation of communications technology - not a bubble.

When people speculate on whether VOIP will become a bubble in this context, I think it's referring more to the over-valuation of the stock at IPO.

I don't think anyone argues that VOIP technology isn't the future of communications, though, and may be worthy of long-term investment.

Re:TechCom and the future

[Anonymous Coward]

The question isn't wether VoIP is the future but rather if it's possible to make any money off it.

Re:TechCom and the future

[Alex P Keaton in da]

who uses a Telegraph anymore? Exactly: NOBODY.
Actually... "Some companies, like Western Union and Swedish Telia still delivers Telegrams, but they serve as nostalgic novelty items rather than a primary means of communication." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraphy#Telex
So some day, we may get an old fashioned phone call as a novelty gift.
I think that in order to invest, one would want to know which technology is going to win out, but also, which company is in the best position to exploit the market. In the 70's, would most have guessed that Digital (the company) would be almost gone twenty years later? Even though computers have, well, stayed on the scene?

Re:TechCom and the future

[WhiteWolf666]

Unlikely. In the intermediate to long-term future, all that thin copper will be replaced with cable or fiber. Well, thats the plan, anyways; who knows how it will turn out.

As VoIP services like Vonage become more common, we'll see traditional phone networks be phased out; either thin copper phone -> VoIP over cable, or thin copper phone -> VoIP over thin copper DSL as a transition to fiber.

Telegrams require an order of magnitude less wiring. While phone lines probably won't be ripped out for awhile, you'll have many new developments that contain no phone lines, or only phone lines in the last block; everything else will be fiber.

In 50 years, you maybe able to make a novelty phone call, i.e. still dial a phone number. Odds are, it'll spend most of its time travelling over VoIP.

Hell, many provider's backbones work over VoIP now. Deployment has no where to go but up.

Re:TechCom and the future

[larry bagina]

He pointed out previous advances in communications technology anymore - specifical AT&T - anyone remember what the second T is? American Telephone and Telegraph - who uses a Telegraph anymore? Exactly: NOBODY

We can expand that further. Who uses AT&T anymore? Exactly: NOBODY.

Re:TechCom and the future

[godlikenerddotcom]

The telecom companies are going to have to adapt by reducing prices and adding features for free to match or come close to VoIP providers.

As it is, why would I pay $30 for a simple line with only local calling when I can get unlimited long distance, call forwarding, call conferencing, caller ID, call waiting, voicemail (with online access), etc. for $25?

It's ridiculous.

Re:TechCom and the future

[blastard]

"He said they refer to technologies like VoIP as "TechCom" and fully expect it to replace Telecom as time goes on - and the market of incompatable technologies is just because the technology is in it's infancy [VHS vs Beta, Laserdisk, VCD, DVD, Blu-ray vs HD-DVD would make a string of good examples] and that overtime they'll eventually all become cross-compatable." VOIP already has a fair amount of compatibility. The problem with Vonage is that the sell users locked ATAs but tell the customer their not locked into a contract. Well yeah, it's not a contract, but what the customer bought looks just like what others are selling, but will not be allowed to work with others. Vonage even had the habit of locking users ATA's that were purchased outside of the Vonage system. I used them 2 years ago and went from being a supporter and getting people signed up to someone who now warns others of their habits. The way they treated their customers back then was inexcusable. I doubt they are much better now. Read Broadband Reports to get more info on them.

Certainly a bubble

[jaredmauch]

It's the same as the DSL rush in the late 90's, the ILECs will win.

They can easily convert everyone to unlimited plans and put the domestic LD carriers out of the voice business. There's just so much profit to be milked out of $.25/min in-state calling that it's hard to justify dropping the prices since people are willing to pay it.

Vonage and others will face the same challenge others have seen when fighting the ILECs.

Re:Certainly a bubble

[pete6677]

Um, what are you talking about? The reason competitive DSL failed is because the providers had to operate over the phone monopoly's lines, which made it all too convenient for the phone companies to push them out in favor of their own DSL. This won't happen with VOIP.

Sure, many people get their internet access through phone company DSL, but it isn't so easy for phone companies to screw with it. In the United States, if a phone or cable company decided to block Vonage and only allow their own digital phone service, that would be called "restraint of trade" and would immediately trigger a lawsuit complete with injunction.

In addition, there are numerous ways to get internet access and there will only be more as time goes on, so it's not something phone companies even have the power to control. People would drop DSL in an instant if they started to restrict what websites and services the average person could use.

As much as phone companies might want to go back to the days of $0.25/min long distance, they can't. There are too many alternatives such as cell phones, calling cards, VOIP, bundled services, that everybody knows that would be way too much to pay for long distance. Vonage may have to fight some uphill battles, but the phone companies do not automatically have them beat like they did the DSL providers.

Re:Certainly a bubble

[bergeron76]

An IPO doesn't mean we're heading into another bubble. It's an IPO for christ-sakes. They happen all the time, even with Tech companies.

Re:Certainly a bubble

[WhiteWolf666]

I agree with you, and keep in mind, that DSL companies aren't the only one you can purchase internet access through.

Vonage works just fine over cable, or fiber, or whatever. (BPL? Fixed Wireless? EV-DO?)

If the phone companies go nuts, block this stuff, and raise prices, expect them to go out of business.

Plus, the baby bells will get challenges from the FCC. Michael Powell uses Vonage as his posterchild for competition in the telecom industry. I wouldn't be surprised if some of this 600 mil goes towards lobbying.

Re:Certainly a bubble

[Anonymous Coward]

i forget my password, and am too damn lazy to remember it, or remember which email account i have it forwarding too. To avoid being an anonymous coward, my slashdot name is "usewhatworks".
Now to the point, you do not know how many people with a modicum of intelligence have said to me today, "ooh google voice, you must be scared". Yes, and google will overtake the NSA for things like Norad, because of google earth. The bubble happened because:
a)people are lemmings, stock brokers included.
b)see A, i worked for Ascend, we bought out by Lucent for 9.8 billions dollars, there market cap was 120 Billion at the time, now where is it, anyone use an Ascend RAS box, isdn/dsl router anymore, i doubt it.
c)you had kids just out of college, getting Director positions at these startups, experience does count people, and not dilbertequse experience.

Being in the bubble is not a bad thing, it means you are in a field that affords you the opportunity to perhaps make some money.

I leave with a flamebait, i cannot help it, slashdot has gotten far to juvenile in the past couple of years:
"Get the fuck out of your moms basement and get some sun, and remember, linux: written by amateurs, for use by amateurs"
I'm not one to start a flameware, but I personally am hoping for another bubble because it will give us folks in IT more power again, and it might give the editors at slashdot real jobs, where you have to do things like, umm work.

And if anyone is clever enough to tell me which email account "usewhatworks" is linked to, please post it, I have my passwords for yahoo,hotmail, etc, all, i just cannot bother going through 3000 spam messages to get the damn account.
-thanks

They want to raise too much, overpriced

[John Seminal]

Vonage wants to raise $600,000,000? But they only have 800,000 customers. That is $750 per current customer? Can Vonage even make that much per customer? What growth do they expect?

To date, the company has raised more than $400 in venture capital

They way I understand, VC will own most of the company. How much of a % ownership did the $400 million buy, and how much of a % ownership will the $600 million have? Are the VC cashing out? This is the stage of the game where they normally do. And I would like to know how much influance the VC has, did they strike a deal with the original investment that the VC has control of when the company goes IPO?

There was a great movie about how VC ruined a company, the DVD is called startup.com. Some very smart guys came up with a great idea. They did all the work, but needed funding. They found VC, and had a big party, they took all their employees on a vacation. Then they realized how much control the VC had. The VC ran the show. The VC fired one of the founders, the guy who was the technical mastermind. It was a nightmare what they did. And the company eventually went bankrupt.

This seems like a bad deal to me. As others have pointed out, cell phones are getting cheaper all the time, and now there are free VoIP services available.

I just can't see how this kind of company could get a billion dollars. It is like we are living in 1999.

Re:They want to raise too much, overpriced

[Quick Sick Nick]

Vonage wants to raise $600,000,000? But they only have 800,000 customers. That is $750 per current customer? Can Vonage even make that much per customer? What growth do they expect? People do stupid things.

Re:They want to raise too much, overpriced

[shinghei]

Maybe not...
One way to value a firm is discounted cash flow (DCF). $750 per customer may seem unreasonable given they are only charging $14.95 per month. But note that it's $750 for the entire lifetime of the firm. In estimating the total value of the firm, you have to take into account the FUTURE free cash flow (FCF) discounted by the cost of capital (WACC).
I'm not going to do the actual calculation here and will leave that to fellow /.ers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discounted_cash_flow

Re:They want to raise too much, overpriced

[WhiteWolf666]

$750 per customer.

That's assuming they develop *no more customers*, which this IPO is most likely predicated on them not doing.

The idea behind an IPO is to fuel explosive growth; an IPO is most definitely *not* a sale of company assets, and current income is only roughly related to how much money you want to raise.

Far more important is business plan; and these IPO rumors are indicative of Vonage planning to build out extensively, or to acquire customers, or both.

$750 a customer? You're thinking wrong.

800,000 customers. Target over 7 years? 9 million customers. 10 fold increase.

Raise 600 million, use that to acquire customers? A $75 per customer acquistion cost is not unreasonable, and 9 million VoIP users is what, ~4% of the telephony market?

You say cell phones are getting cheaper, and there are free VoIP services avaliable, but they just aren't the same, or as convenient. It's pretty easy to sell people on something that requires no configuration and acts exactly like a normal phone company telephone.

And the baby bells are a nice, fat target.

It's not an unreasonable goal, nor an unreasonable amount of money to raise. And given that their average plan goes for $20 a month, a $75 per customer acquisition cost will cover itself in 4 months.

That's *great* business. This, of course, depends on their business plan, on whether or not providers cut them out of the market (though the FCC loves Vonage) and whether or not these 911 lawsuits put them out of business (looks like this threat is passing).

I say this as someone who has switched his home phones and some business phones to vonage, 9 lines in total.

Re:They want to raise too much, overpriced

[killjoe]

"VC cashing out?"

Probably. Most VCs exist to take the company to public and cash out at that state. They are by and large not interested in long term viability of a company and have no real desire to hold on to ownsership of companies beyond that point.

They are called VENTURE capitalists for a reason. Once a company is public it's no longer a venture. At that point you might as well buy a mutal fund.

Re:They want to raise too much, overpriced

[shess]

There was a great movie about how VC ruined a company, the DVD is called startup.com.

Wow, I'm totally positive that you took the wrong point home from that one. The world is full of smart guys with great ideas, people so smart that they can't be bothered to spend five minutes thinking about why the solution they're proposing doesn't solve a problem people are willing to pay to solve. There were a lot of .com companies that were basically smart people with a great idea EXCEPT [fill in a blank]. Note that "smart people" and "great idea" isn't the important point, the Valley has those in droves, the important point is whatever it was that comes after EXCEPT. If you don't know what comes after EXCEPT, you have no business building a startup.

[FYI, I pretty much understand that what comes after EXCEPT for most of my ideas isn't a positive thing. That's why I'm unlikely to ever found a startup.]

-scott

Re:They want to raise too much, overpriced

[Anonymous Coward]

White's got a great point - user experiences will advertise Vonage better than anything they can do on TV.

In the last 10 years my phone bill from The Big Company has gone from $15/month to $60/month for what I consider "need to have in a city" services: voicemail, call forwarding, caller ID, etc. BellSouth charged me $108 for a single phone call without telling me the rate was $3/minute. Then they repeatedly "lost" my dispute several times before telling me I had to pay. So, fine, I paid them and switched to Vonage at $15/month for the same quality service. I now get great joy in hearing the BellSouth sales reps' reactions when they call me and ask how much I'm paying for all the long distance I need (I only use 200 minutes/month).

And I'm sorry for those hurt by 911 problems, but Vonage has been quite diligent on insisting that I know that if I dial 911 it goes to a general access line. I knew that when I signed up. I can't hold them responsible for something I chose. If I want the real 911, I'll use my GPS-enabled cell phone.

The lawsuits will pass, and everyone will win.

P.S. The market isn't limited to the USA. My father has a business in Central America, and his new Vonage line lets him call the USA for free instead of $1/minute, with quality better than most cell phones. One thing to note in the Vonage terms of service: The device has to be shipped to the USA, but you can use it anywhere in the world. That's a huge market, and Vonage is in the front of the line.

Re:They want to raise too much, overpriced

[Gunzour]

VC will own a significant portion of the company, yes. The VC's goal is to make money -- they may sell much of their stake in the company after the IPO to take their profits. If they believe the company will still grow they may stick around for a while longer.

As for the startup company that got "ruined" by VC -- it sounds like the guys who started the company didn't know what they were getting into. Of course the VC is going to want significant control of the company. It will all be spelled out in the VC deal -- if they didn't realize until later how much control they gave away then they weren't paying attention. Besides, VC money is *not* for parties and vacation -- any idiot who takes VC money and sends his entire staff on vacation is asking to be fired.

Re:They want to raise too much, overpriced

[Tetsujin28]

It is like we are living in 1999.

Cue the purple.

Will pretentious questions be the end of Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus fucking Christ! STOP SUBMITTING STORIES WITH FUCKING STUPID "QUESTIONS" AT THE END.

"Will this be the death of X?"

"Uh oh, is X's dominance in the market place over?"

You won't phrase shit like this as a statement because you know it is retarded given the unimportant news announcement preceding it. Instead you write it as a question because then you can just claim to be "provocative" instead of a "fucking moron."

Re:How to tell if you are a VOIP fanatic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking Amen.

* Cue the hordes of Linux-loving Slashbots to refute each point with Linux-loving Slashbot bullshit.

Why so much fuss about one single step?

[papaia]

I am trying to understand why so much fuss and waste of /. resources, about VoIP or IPTelephony (for the puritans who want to separate the two), when voice is just another communication methodology, meant to be brought alongside all the others, for a final unification of information exchange?
Application unification and network convergence dictate such steps (be it VoIP, or industrial ethernet, or whatever ...), but none of them is the "final" target. The real target should be ease of access to information, via a common infrastructure, with an accesible set of interfaces, and the communications means of exchanging such (info), eventually. If you look at the problem this way, then you would see that transport, storage, query, etc. are functions which could not be universally applicable, over different facets of communication, unless things like VoIP happen (and NOT because of ROIs!).

Criminal CEO?

[DoctorHibbert]

http://damienkatz.net/2005/04/fuck_vonage.html

Re:Criminal CEO?

[Anonymous Coward]

The person who wrote that is an idiot. Grade A idiot.

Re:Criminal CEO?

[radtea]

My dealings with Vonage were not dissimilar. They've still never paid me what they owe me, although my credit card company successfully challenged the "cancelation fee" they charged me when I found that they didn't have local numbers in my area (despite the fact that I checked on that specifically when signing up.)

So I kinda do hope they go public--it'll be an opportunity to make more than the amount they owe me, as this has all the makings of a great short-term investment: a rapidly-growing company that's the leader in the "next big thing", where no one wants to get left behind even though no one knows how to make money at it.

Re:How to tell if you are a VOIP fanatic.

[HeLLFiRe1151]

Says the anonymous cowards.

Public IPO would do more than bring capitol to Von

[amichalo]

An IPO would do more than just give Vonage capital to reinvest in infrastructure and R&D, it would bring a tone of legitimacy to the VoIP industry and Vonage as a company.

I replaced my Bell land line with Vonage almost two years ago. The service has been similar to cell phones as far as a few growing pains in the first months with packet dropping (due to my cable modem I found ou t- a replacement fixed the issues!)

But in the past year, the only complaint has been one time when I happen to be downloading some large torrents and the wife was unhappy about her phone conversation quality.

Plus it is far less expensive than a land line, and portable which allows me to vacation six states away and be reachable on my home phone line...and even better...make calls from it too.

Pop

[Doc Ruby]

The rise in any one stock, even if it's a stupendous rise, is not a "Bubble". A Bubble is when any stock is inflated in price: it's a market bubble, not a company bubble. People saying a Vonage IPO is a bubble are squandering the chance to learn something from the lesson-filled Bubble of the late-1990s market. And making it harder for others to learn from it. What, do you want a return to worthless corporate paper costing a real fortune that badly that you see it lurking in every equity offering rumor?

Use VOIP as the back end to cell phones...

[HockeyPuck]

Who says that Vonage doesn't have other plans to sell VOIP services to the major telcos so that your cell phone when it reaches landline gets converted to VOIP, or that the core voice network for some telco is VOIP and they leverage vonage's expertise in this area.

On the other hand, the large telcos would probably just buy the technology directly from Cisco/Avaya etc...

Re:Use VOIP as the back end to cell phones...

[BlakeOPS]

They're called packet switches and Verizon is migrating their TDM network to them. http://www.networkworld.com/edge/news/2002/0710ver izon.html

Deregulation

[willisbueller]

The ISP thing was kinda weird though... at first there was no behemoth, AOL couldn't corner the market over the little guys, and then all of the sudden as things progressed the standard big players moved in... I don't know who you guys have down south, but up here Bell, Rogers and Cogeco dominate. I'm going to bet they take over the voIP business eventually as well, as they are asking(probably get their way) for an unregulated voIP market. They'll have enough muscle to shove the small guys out of the market.

Deregulation could make this interesting.

[willisbueller]

If the telecom's can get the market deregulated ,they should be able to push the smaller guys (vonage) out of the market. The risks are certainly high in the TechCom market pending regulatory approval, but the payoff for those who choose wisely is going to be big.

Re:How to tell if you are a VOIP fanatic.

[joelleo]

For those that ask if voip is "worth it," the answer is "it depends."

For me, it makes sense. Even though Vonage doesn't yet have Hawaii area codes, I'm able to maintain a San Francisco phone number for my coworkers and maintain a US phone number while travelling internationally. There are numerous other features that make it truly useful.

I recently spent a month and a half in Jakarta and for 1 month of that time, I was working. I had DSL and was able to plug in my voip router and get cracking right away. The fact that voip is access-agnostic meant I was able to carry my voice accessibility with me without racking up an enormous bill. I didn't depend on CDMA, TDMA, GSM or any of their child technologies and didn't need to pay any sort of roaming fees. Barring an unfortunate incident at the JW Marriot involving a miscommunication of the voltage through a certain plug, I had no issues using my voip router while there at all. Well, ok there were issues with incredible network congestion during Jakarta business hours but I was working EST hours :) 10Kb/s up and down is NOT sufficient.

Re:How to tell if you are a VOIP fanatic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't you be compiling a kernel or something right about now?

All I can say is...

[Anonymous Coward]

... they can do whatever they want, as long as they shut the hell up. Every second TV commercial is "Vuh-Vuh-VOOOONAAGE", half the sites I go to now have that stupid Vonage astronaut guy.

For God's sake, just shut the hell up!!!

Phones that can crash? No thanks

[Bin Naden]

Who seriously wants a phone system that can crash? Damn, I'm trying to call 911 for that heart attack but my phone does not work. I'd wait before joining VOIP service.

Re:Maybe they need the money to get some engineers

[michaelhood]

Got a URL documenting this?

Will it...

[TheSHAD0W]

Will Vonage then be the first VOIPIPO?

Re:Will it...

[saskboy]

And if they launch the news from Pitsburgh, then it'll be the first VOIPIPOIPP [In Pitsburgh, Pennsylvania].

In Soviet Russia...

[Anonymous Coward]

(Subject of title) (verb of title in present tense) YOU!

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh god, when is the whole "soviet russia" thing going to just fucking die?

It wasn't funny 10 years ago when people first started posting it here, and it's even less funny today.

MOD PARENT FUNNY

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about the rest of it, but...

17. You feel inferior deep inside but unable to admit it, you don't have a database as easy and powerful as Access.

That's just freaking hystericl!

Re:MOD PARENT FUNNY

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't Linux have spellcheck? Or is it still in version 0.99.9.234.beta1.preview.rc1?

Re:MOD PARENT FUNNY

[Anonymous Coward]

No, what he should have said was "Linux doesn't have a database as feature bloated, slow, network unaware, memory intensive and lame as Access"

I am new to this

[Kagura]

Is it possible for an initial public offering to "fail"? How would that happen? Are there consequences to going IPO but then not gathering as much money as you had hoped? Thanks in advance.

Re:I am new to this

[shinghei]

That's when investment bankers comes in as the underwriter. In return, they earn fees and allocation of shares at lower price.

Re:Public IPO would do more than bring capitol to

[michaelhood]

But in the past year, the only complaint has been one time when I happen to be downloading some large torrents and the wife was unhappy about her phone conversation quality.

Get a QoS-enabled router. If you buy a Linksys WRT54G, you can install OpenWrt on it. OpenWrt basically turns it into a linux box, and gives you full control over the QoS characteristics, etc etc. Pretty cool stuff.

Vonage has been a success for me

[marlinSpike]

I'm a very happy Vonage customer, and have been for about two years now. I have never had a problem and have never experienced any issues at all. Now, my parents in India have taken a Vonage box home, and I call them on a 'local' Boston number, and hear them as crisply as I would my neighbor... and for free (well, for $24.99/mo)!!

When I switched over to Vonage, I went the porting-my-number way, which took about three weeks, which I think as industry standard at the time, and there wasn't anything that Vonage could really do about it anyway, because the ball was in Verizon's court to 'release' my number.

I really don't know what's keeping more people from switching over to VoIP. I know my enthusiasm for new technologies often gets me in a bit of a bind (as my less than pleasant experience with early-adopter Bell Atlantic DSL), but VoIP has been all plusses for me.

I'm glad Vonage is going public finally -- in these times, it's the sign of a company growing up (after all, this is the post 90s age). While I'm happy with their product, there is one more feature they could provide which would really thrill me -- allowing me to use my mobile phone to make calls over my VoIP line... make sense?

Re:Vonage has been a success for me

[joelleo]

While I'm happy with their product, there is one more feature they could provide which would really thrill me -- allowing me to use my mobile phone to make calls over my VoIP line... make sense? Hmmm a voip gateway? Might be useful. I know there are voip over 802.11{b,g,n} "cell" handsets being developed, maybe it would be an interesting bridge from wired voip to wireless voip...

Re:Vonage has been a success for me

[sci50514]

Me and my girl are calling each other for free since we both use hardware SIP adapters from sipphone.com. I don't understand what's the fad about Vonage. Vonage is only worth it when you make a lot of SIP to PSTN call. If both parties have broadband, getting a SIP device on either side means you can call each other for free. No subscription at all.

RE: Google talk

[Siddly]

Don't you just love those companies whose businesses are solidly based on Linux, whose products run on Linux, but don't cater for the Linux user? Google, TomTom and even some Linux-based firewalls that don't support Linux clients.

Stocks

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't buy stocks to just buy low and sell high. You buy stocks to earn money from the dividends.

In my honest opinion, it's dirty to earn money buy only buying to buy low and sell high. It is much more honest to buy stock to earn the dividends because it's a true reflection of the profits the company has earned.

Re:Stocks

[bonehead]

It's "dirty"?

That's the stupidest fucking thing I've heard all day (even counting the three lame "soviet russia" jokes I've come across).

I would have to agree with you.

[JPriest]

Additionally, VoIP will be the technology that makes video phones a reality. Video is something just not possible with a standard analog line.

Re:Will pretentious questions be the end of Slashd

[Matt - Duke '05]

A-MEN.

It makes me sick how formulaic most of these stories are:

[insert unimportant story here]. [Make an absolutely outlandish jump to conclusions and ask a ridiculous rhetorical question that bears absolutely no logical connection whatsoever to either a.) the story in question or b.) any sane person's version of reality].

Example: Blah blah blah some anime company using Bittorent for distribution blah blah blah. The question is will other distributors and studios follow ADV's example or stick to their current distribution models?"

Are you fucking kidding me? Yeah -- Dreamworks is going to start distributing all of their blockbusters over BitTorrent without any DRM starting, uhm, NEVER?

Dear Slashdot:
This morning Microsoft's stock fell 3/10ths of a cent.... Is this the beginning of the end of the evil empire?

Dear Slashdot:
Google recently announced a beta of some new program they're making... Will they cure cancer and AIDS next?

Dear Slashdot:
Hollywood just announced another round of lawsuits for people illegally distributing copyrighted works online.... What's next? Is an elite team of Navy Seals and Green Berets going to storm my apartment (read: my mother's basement) the next time I download and install the latest Debian torrent?

Stop asking idiotic questions at the end of stories. You know the answers to them. This is _not_ a sign of "good" writing. It is fucking hackneyed and makes you look like a goddamned idiot.

Yah think I've got some strong feelings on the topic? ;-)

I cancelled my Vonage over a FWD 800 call :)

[beeblebrox]

While I never experienced anything like Damien Katz mentions, I have pretty much the same reaction when it comes to Vonage. Fuck'em.

The $10 disconnect fee in particular makes them the used-car dealers of VoIP.

I did have the pleasure of calling their 800 number to cancel using pulver's Free World Dialup, hehe.

D.

Re:Maybe they need the money to get some engineers

[ndtechnologies]

I sincerely hope so...we need some innovation, and some revolution in our media and technology fronts.

Re:How to tell if you are a VOIP fanatic.

[Ingolfke]

34. You think the reason your co-workers don't want to hear about your Linux hacking stories every morning is because they're idiots and don't understand real technology. In fact it's because you've elected to continue tweaking your Gentoo box each morning for the past 4 days instead of bathing. You smell.

Re:Maybe they need the money to get some engineers

[b0r1s]

http://www.vonage.com/search_results.php?search_st ring=tftp

The cheapest VoIP provider, is the least known!

[Enviro]

I wouldn't bother with skype if you actually want to use VoIP as an alternative to a conventional phone as it's way too expensive.

I use http://www.voipbuster.com/Voipbuster to make calls and http://www.sipgate.co.uk/ Sipgate to recieve

Sipgate allocate UK geographical numbers to their users accounts free of charge, with the added bonus that you can you can choose any national code, it doesn't matter where you live as long as you live in the UK.

Voipbuster offer free calls to PSTN lines at these destinations.

Australia Austria Belgium Canada Czech Republic Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Ireland Luxembourg Netherlands Norway Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom United States

I mean compare that with skype!

The call quality is excellent and relability is good as long as you don't use the voipbuster software although admitedly I have had some problems with Voipbuster.

For software you're better off using either x-ten or firefly which are available elsewhere on the net. Configeration is fairly straightforward

As you can see with so many destinations available as a free call, there's little point in using propriatory skype unless you value the instant messaging capabilities. Unfortunately it seems http://www.tribeworks.com/home/vibe.asp google may want to buy skype. Personally I think this is a shame because a propriatry protocol will become more popular even though there are decent open alternatives. It will be interesting what google will charge for calls

I've gone slightly overboard and invested in a http://www.sipura.com/products/spa2000.htm sipura spa 2000. It set me back about £40, has two phone lines and if you combine this with a dect phone you create a wireless SIPphone for the house. Given the price and the fact you normally need a phoneline in the firstplace, I just bought it as abit of a toy for now. By using Sipgate I can go anywhere in the world and keep the same local number which is quite cool.

You can pick up other adapters fairly cheaply but you might have to make do with a single phoneline.

There's also http://www.voipcheap.co.uk/ which is part of finarea, the company behind voipbuster http://www.call1899.co.uk/ and http://www.call18866.co.uk/

Re:The cheapest VoIP provider, is the least known!

[tom17]

MOD PARENT UP!

I use voipbuster too and I really can't see why people aren't making a fuss about it. Its free! Beats all these vonage dudes who have to charge you money!

Better Call...

[Ranger]

...911. Oh, wait. I can't! #?@%*!

911 Call from vonage

[Anonymous Coward]

There are problems with 911 call from VOIP system unless FCC comes up with something it is not suggested to use.

Cell phones??

[Penguinoflight]

Since when did they become affordable? As long as marketing is so dominant a driving force in "mobile technology" affordability will not be the goal, and it certainly wont be possible.

Now take vonage, A company of their position is doing well to go with an IPO just for the publicity. With the success of google major news organizations will cover the IPO story and vonage gets free advertising.

An IPO may or may not be a good thing for users of their service (come to think of it I cant see how it could be good for their users), but it certainly will be good for vonage.

Tell it like it is: Listen to the blogs

[kamikaze-Tech]

The OP mentioned the main-stream press. The following blogs all give different angles on the same story, all worth viewing: ZDNet Russ Shaw Om at Gigaom Jeff Pulver Mark Evens and the Vonage Forum

Re:Tell it like it is: Listen to the blogs

[kamikaze-Tech]

Oh, BTW, I submitted this very same story over 24 hours ago when it was , and the slashdoter's rejected it. Hey Slashdot: Get on the ball, this is old news now, dah. No wonder Slashdot is no longer what you it to be..., get ON the ball, not behind it.

Re:How to tell if you are a VOIP fanatic.

[Duhavid]

And, of course, none of the Microsoft loving people have any similiar problems.

Nay! They are completely on the side of Right! Truth! Justice! and all good Microsoft kinds of things.

Microsoft has never done any wrong thing, it's all envious smelly Linux lovers making it up.

Almost forgot... Say "hi" to mom.

Re:Maybe they need the money to get some engineers

[michaelhood]

o/t.. curious, are you involved with vobbo?

Direct calls

[Narcogen]

Vonage doesn't allow direct calls? You think they route calls between Vonage users through the PSTN, so they can pay the telco for traffic between their own customers? What I think you mean to say is that you can't call, say, a Skype user using their Skype ID. But then again, you can't Skype to a Vonage phone except through the PSTN either. There are lots of SIP clients that are connected to other networks, and even though the clients themselves are interoperable the networks aren't. For instance, I don't think you'll be able to Google Talk to a Skype user directly for free. This is especially true of clients like Skype that allow free direct IP connections. The free service is an incentive to get you signed up on their network, and hopefully for some value-added services like for-pay PSTN connectivity. If the same thing happens to SIP that has happened to IM-- that now there are free, open-source multiprotocal clients, that allow free communication amongst various networks, with the only one making any profit out of it the ISP you pay for your traffic-- I think we'll see SIP network operators like Vonage as well as developers like Skype do what AIM, ICQ and MSN have tried to do in the past-- block "unofficial" clients. This, to me, is what is interesting about Google Talk. I'm interested to see if their attempts at "federating" apply just to IM, or whether they intend to try and to that for SIP as well.

No way I'd invest...

[BucksCountyCycleGeek]

Seems to me like VoIP is a technology that makes phone service more competitive, not less. The best investments are in companies that have defensible positions within a marketplace. Companies that rope their customers in with long-term contracts (like real estate) or high switching costs (Microsoft and Verizon) and especially high cost of entry (Airlines) have fewer risks involved for the investor.

VoIP makes every company vulnerable because switching is so easy. Think of it - once you've got a $VOIP_BOX, how much difficulty is there in reconfiguring? Just upload some firmware, bada-bing-bada-bam, you've got a new phone number!

The only way Vonage will be able to hold on to its customers will be to

(1) offer better service, which will be quickly matched by your competitors.

(2) lower the price. Again - competitors can respond easily. Costs money.

(3) Market heavily. This could work, but phone service isn't sexy like mobile phones are. And marketing costs money anyway.

I predict that investors will think "Vonage! I saw them on TV, which means that it must be good" kind of like AOL was and Google is getting to be. A lot of dumb money will follow them and I'll short the stock and cash in when the bubble bursts.

Re:Phones that can crash? No thanks

[ZorbaTHut]

People who aren't terribly worried about things that would require instant phone access.

People who have multiple lines anyway (cellphone, anyone?)

I gotta admit, when I balance "chance of heart attack and crashed phone system" vs "money I'd save", I'll go with the phone system. My BSD router's been up for 124 days now, and the only reason it's been that short is because the power went out 124 days ago . . .

. . . and my house phone is a cordless phone with a wall plug that's needed for operation.

The only reason I haven't switched yet is because I use DSL (my ISP is awesome) but doesn't yet support DSL-with-no-phone-line. :/

Re:Maybe they need the money to get some engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

they should raise their target to 90 mil customers

[YesIAmAScript]

Then it'd be only $7.50 per customer!

What I mean to say is that there are certain issues with evaluating a companies' IPO based upon their targets for customers instead of their actual customer list.

If you ask me, $750/customer is far too much.

The idea that an IPO is to fuel "explosive growth" is hilarious. That's .com talk. The original reason to go public was to get working capital so you could grow the company in ways you couldn't without it. But in reality there are very few companies that are only separated from success by lack of money.

Current income is greatly related to how much money you want to raise, because in order to raise the money you are selling a portion of the company. The less your current income, the less your company is worth, so the larger percentage of your company you have to sell to raise a given amount of cash.

Honestly, when a company goes IPO, I have to ask. If this company thinks their stock is so damn valuable, why are they selling it? The answer is usually something other than "this is the best way to raise the cash we need to grow". It's more often "our VCs want their cash out so they can put it somewhere better". Wonderful, I wish the VCs would please let me in on this investment opportunity that is better than this company that's going IPO. I'll invest in that instead.

I went public with a company. This was pre .com days, so I didn't make a lot of dough. I'll say this, it destroyed the company. The company had to replace their competent principals with people with "business experience" and had to take on a CEO who looked the part to Wall Street types. Then the execs couldn't tell us anything about future plans anymore because of SEC rules. And they bought a company that was in a different business than ours, because underwriters didn't like to take one-trick companies public (at that time).

That was the end of the company. It turned into a whole new company.

Which is really the #1 thing I learned about companies going public. If you liked a company, you don't want them to go public. Because they will turn into a new company when they go public, and there's no guarantee you'll like that one too.

Vonage is a decent company I guess. I'd never invest in them though. Just because you're the lead in a business doesn't mean you're going to do well. Look at TiVo.

Re:Will pretentious questions be the end of Slashd

[killeena]

Will this be the death of X? Is X's dominance in the market place over? Who can save X? Tune in next week to find out. Same bat time, same bat channel.

Vonage bubble?

[willCode4Beer.com]

I'll give the simple math answer.
Generally, we say a companies value should be about 10x its annual revenue.
So, with Vonage having 800,000 subscribers (FTA) at about $30/month (based on my bill) we get $24,000,000/month or $288,000,000/year.
This would indicate that their value should get up to over 2.88 billion dollars.
Now, take their really low operating overhead and add the tech dotcom bubble effect, they'll probably end up worth 100 times that ;)

Google talk has voip?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I installed google talk and it lets you chat with other IM people, but I can't figure out how to call a telephone with it. Doesn't sound like voip to me.

Re:Phones that can crash? No thanks

[caffeinex36]

Thats a stupid way to think about it, have you REALLY looked at the reliability factor? I have had Vonage for about 3 years and have NEVER had an outage. BUT.............my landline has been down a whole BUNCH of times, mainly from people hitting the telephone box thing in my apartment complex. But, even through storms I seem to have vonage no problems..and if in the event it ever goes out, it defaults to ring my cell phone. and i can take it to my hotel with me when I travel........... in my case, the options and price (i pay 14.99) really outweigh the cost and bullshit of dealing with verizon.

If we need it, start building it.

[elucido]

Most of us have the technical expertise to build the next internet, so lets actually build it instead of talk about it. Here are a few sites to help you with your networking, Always On Fast Company
Alonovo World Changing

Not A Big (Stock) Deal

[thelizman]

Vonage and other VoIP providers are profiting from a disruptive technology. With some 15% of Americans now using VoIP (and growing), you had better believe the big phone companies are going to react to that kind of competitive pressure by offering similar price structuring (if not the same technology). Me? I'm going to buy the hell out of Vonage on opening day to take advantage of all the speculating idiots. And I'm going to sell it within the week. It's not that Vonage is a bad company, or unprofitable, but they do not have the resources to maintain market cap when the big boys move to reclaim their customer base.

Also, don't forget Skype. Same service. $0 cost if you're calling someone else on Skype.

Re:Not A Big (Stock) Deal

[Gunzour]

Except the Skype isn't the same at all. Skype requires me to install software on my PC and use my PC to make phone calls. Vonage lets me use my existing land-line phones without having to even turn my computer on. And, in my case, since Skype couldn't seem to detect the microphone on my computer, it didn't even work at all.

Love 'em? I'm about to dump them

[bradleyland]

What what -at, did did -id, you you -ou, say say -ay?

I have Vonage, and I'd say that 7 out of 10 calls I make have some sort of quality issue. Usually Echo, sometimes stutter. I have 3072/768 kbps DSL, and I've tested the SnR at 15dB myself. My xDSL test set says the line will handle close to 6 mbps, so I know the connection is solid.

Here's a quote from the Vonage site on the echo issue:

"We recommend asking the other party to lower the phone volume in order to reduce the feedback of your voice. If the problem is originating electrically, advise the other party that their telephone cables may need to be replaced."

I told that to a friend at a publishing company. He and I had a good laugh. He'll go ahead and have the lines replaced right away.

Yep, and I'll bet they'll make a killing

[MikeyTheK]

It seems like a weird time for an IPO, since http://www.sunrocket.com/ undercuts Vonage by about $9.00 per month if you prepay, and gives away a couple of phones to go with it, and some free international time, oh, and a free second phone number in any area code.

Uh, yes you can

[MikeyTheK]

Not only can you call 911, but E911 support was mandated by the FCC a couple of months ago. In the case of Vonage and a couple of others, they were initially denied the 911-redirect numbers, which meant that you got an administrative phone in a 911 center. On a couple of well publicized occasions, the results were tragic. However, shortly cell phones will be the only ones that don't give a dead-on location for all customers, and (hopefully) that will only be a matter of time, but the GPS capability of cell phones still needs work. Unfortunately your cell company frequently can't pinpoint your location, either, and can only give the 911 center a general location (which at its tightest is several square city blocks, and at its worst is an arc of a couple of miles).

Is VoIP pronounced "voype"?

[Anxarcule]

The host of the NPR show Marketplace was talking about Google Talk yesterday and he thought he was all cool in saying things like "voype services" for VoIP.

Does anyone actually say this in real life?

Re:Is VoIP pronounced "voype"?

[bonehead]

Yes, they do. I work in the telecom industry, and pretty much everyone pronounces it "voype". It's been a very long time since I've heard anyone in the industry actually say V-O-I-P.

Re:Public IPO would do more than bring capitol to

[amichalo]

I actually do own a WRT54G but I haven't heard of OpenWrt. This flashes the built in OS and basically replaces all the software on the box right? How big is the OpenWrt user base? I wouldn't want to flash my box with an OS some teen in Germany supports for him and his eight friends.

Re:Public IPO would do more than bring capitol to

[PhreakOfTime]

no no no, youve got it all wrong!

I came her to do two things, chew bubble gum ,and kick ass. And Im aaallll out of bubble gum

To this day, that is still a great movie. If you havent seen it go download a copy of "They Live". Rowdy roddy piper as an actor is just something you have to see for yourself! Horrible acting, but really a good storyline.

We clearly didn't watch the same startup.com

[Sagarian]

The movie I saw documented in painful detail how a pair of no-talent assclowns raised and subsequently wasted a large pile of investor money on a very stupid idea.

Re:Will pretentious questions be the end of Slashd

[Anonymous Coward]

Zonk writes "I was finishing my third triple layer sausage onion and chocolate breakfast cake this morning, when I stumbled upon the Pwntcha article posted on slashdot the other morning. As my eyes scanned the page I noticed Mr. Goatse doing this thing. My first thought was that I needed to get a hold of Taco...and not to report the troll. I then experienced my own personal "1up.com" in my pants." Living a lie anyone?

Re:Will pretentious questions be the end of Slashd

[Drakonian]

LOL. Nice post.

I hate the stupid questions too, but I have a feeling the editors like them and are more likely to post a submission with them. Maybe they think it makes the site more professional sounding or something? Or maybe, if they are smart, they realize how annoying and retarded the question is, guaranteeing a lot of comments answering the question, and thus generating more page views.

That's my guess.

Geesh

[thelizman]

Long distance VoIP. Local calling isn't where Vonage is making an impact on the market. Fix your mic.

Re:Geesh

[Gunzour]

Local calling isn't where Vonage is making an impact on the market.

Actually, it is. Skype is about being able to reach people around the globe without paying anything for it. Vonage is about replacing your local phone service with something essentially as good but less than half the price.

Re:Will pretentious questions be the end of Slashd

[Castar]

Are you fucking kidding me? Yeah -- Dreamworks is going to start distributing all of their blockbusters over BitTorrent without any DRM starting, uhm, NEVER?

Actually, that started a few years ago.

Oh, you mean _officially_?

Not interesting

[orev]

This information is interesting coming out not long after Google's recent release of Google Talk, which overs instant messaging/VoIP services PC-to-PC as well as a surge in marketing by VoIP providers such as Covad and Skype.

No, this is not at all interesting. Just because Google launched some service, it does not mean that every other service that's remotely related to it is going to fail. IM VOIP is nothing at all like Vonage VOIP, because no matter what, people still want an actual phone to talk on.

Re:Public IPO would do more than bring capitol to

[michaelhood]

No idea how popular/supported OpenWrt is.

However, I purchased a login to an international index of content. In the spirit of free software, I will share it with Slashdot, and you. Besides, it seems they have a fair amount of information on this OpenWrt stuff. Some 245,000 entries in their database.
Go ahead and click here. It'll log you in as me and you can browse, too.

Good luck!

Uhm...no

[thelizman]

1. Skype charges for calls to telco lines.
2. Vonage's services are between $5 cheaper and $5 more expensive than telco local plans, depending on whether you want long distance access or not. That means there's no advantage over local telco service with Vonage.
3. With VoIP providers, long distance is charged at a far lower rate than telco providers.
4. You clearly haven't a clue what you're talking about. So stop talking.

Vonage cellphones

[Warblimp]

With Vonage partnering with American tower(a nation wide wimax provider) I can see one huge new market Vonage will hit after a successful IPO. Broadband cellphone service. No more problems steaming video to the handset, more ability for the network to handle a greater load of calls, and internet without the horrid extra charges(maybe). This is something that I have been intrested in for a while. With wimax being put in to Intel's mobile tech for 2006 you have to see the day of driving cross country with out loosing broadband connectivity is at hand. I will continue to watch the situation intently. (Though, I will admit /. makes it easier to do.) Cheers