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Vonage IPO
mesowarny writes "The street writes: Vonage Holdings, moved to become the first major Internet telephony player to go public by filing Wednesday to raise up to $250 million via an initial offering of stock and named a Tyco International executive as CEO. Our revenues were $18.7million in 2003, $79.7million in 2004, and $174.0 million for the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2005," the company's prospectus says."While our revenues have grown rapidly, we have experienced increasing net losses, primarily driven by our increase in marketing expenses. From the period of inception through Sept.30, 2005, our cumulative net loss was $310 million. Our net loss for the nine months ended Sept.30, 2005, was $189.6million. During the same nine-month period, our marketing expenses were $176.3million."
No link to Vonage?
Seriously, I'm really impressed by their success so far. Many of my non-geek friends and family are starting to use Vonage - it beats the heck out of SBC.
Something that frustrates me, though, is the apparent lack of VOIP for small businesses. I have a small company where my partner and I work from our home offices and on the road, about an hour away from each other. Every call is long distance. We're paying through the nose for our cell phones, which barely work in our houses anyway. Looking around, I've only found a handful of VOIP companies that are affordable, and most of them don't seem to be very helpful for my situation. We were talking about how cool it would be to set up an Asterisk box so we could have the voicemail, forwarding, etc. It's just not something I have time for.
The Vonage business service doesn't seem like much more than a residential+fax line. Another place I saw sent you a box you had to set up but it was pricy. It's like there's no in-between.
Anyone have a suggestion?
When I signed up, I was paying $34.95/mo for unlimited US/Canada. Twice they dropped the price on me, each time by $5.
They're considerably cheaper than the local cable company, Time Warner. I guess TW has two advantages -- bundling for price, and for making it a check-off. Personally, though, I move every year or two, and I prefer keeping it simple with a carrier-independent service.
I'd certainly not have had a problem with them keeping it at $29.95... I wonder how much that 16% drop in revenue per customer has affected their losses vs. the subscriber gain by being at a lower price point.
I still think that one of the biggest obstacles to VoIP is that they don't make it super-obvious how to use your normal in-house wiring with their service to make it indistinguishable from a handset/wiring perspective. That's what keeps people like my mother from considering it.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Technically, the Tyco fiasco was only Kozlowski (former CEO), Swartz (former CFO), and Belnick (former chief legal officer). Essentially, they took out personal, no interest, loans from the company totalling $170m without informing shareholders. This was later written off as benefits which the benefits committee did not approve beforehand. (Although, I have my doubts about the possibility that $170m in personal loans would go unnoticed by other people within the company.)
In my opinion this is a questionable business decision at best. Vonage has all the earmarks of a mid 90's "bubble" company with a shaky at best business plan. Now, they go public on unstable ground and hire a person from Tyco as CEO. While he may not have contributed to the scandal at Tyco, anything associated with Tyco has, deserved or not, a bad reputation associated with it. This wouldn't be my first choice as hire if I was trying to convince potential stockholders to invest.
$sys$droids
Vonage IPO Propectus:0 104746906001567/a2167036zs-1.htm
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1272830/00
VoIP is cool stuff and can save you a bundle on your phone bills (if you make many long-distance calls). BUT make sure your internet connection is good enough for it. It's not just about throughput, you need low latency and low jitter as well. Anyway, try your connection out at http://testyourvoip.com/ a few different times of the day and make sure it is worth your time.
My Dad and a couple of co-workers have Vonage and they all love it. Unfortunately my DSL is pretty much at the limit of the distance from the local telephone CO so my line is not up as much as I want my phone to be... ah well.
-ben
I just upgraded to FIOS and was told for an additional $5 a month I could get unlimited long distance. When I asked how that came about the reply was that it was meant to compete against VoIP firms. So now I am using Verizon, pay $22 less per month than Vonage was, and am actually able to use my fax at full speed, something that was elusive with Vonage.
I am not sure I would invest in them just yet.
I have seen so many trolls in this thread, and they almost sound like they have valid arguments. However, if you know facts, then they are easily busted.
1. Vonage does not require contracts. I have had Vonage for well over a year now, and I have referred people to Vonage with in the past month. No one I know who has Vonage has even heard of a service contract.
2. Myth: Vonage has lost of dropped calls or calls that do not connect. This is false. If you do experience these problems, then it is likly cause by a problem with A: Your network set up. B: Your cable line. I had Vonage with no problems, and then all the sudden I experienced degraded call quality and dropped calls, however my Xbox Live was dropping connection too. Turned out, the cable company did an "up grade" at a terminal close to my house and it had a bad connection in place. Cable company fixed it, no more problems with Vonage, and no more problems with Xbox Live. If anything, I would say VOIP has helped me resolve problems with my connection more than it has hurt me.
3. Myth: The call quality is horrible. Again, I have had Vonage for over a year. People cannot tell I use VOIP. Now, I can't use a ton of upstream while I'm on the phone because it CAN cause degraded call quality, but I have not had much problem with that. I am regularly playing a game on Xbox Live while talking on my vonage line with no problems, and Xbox live does use a pretty hefty amount of upstream.
I love my Vonage. If you want to try it for yourself, just email me, and I can send you a referral link. Granted, you can get 1 month free just by signing up through thier site, but going through my link would help a fellow slashdotter out. wagaman@gmail.com
Never argue with an idiot. They will just bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.