Vonage Allowed to Sign New Customers

terrymr writes "The Court of Appeals for the federal circuit has stayed the injunction against Vonage pending their appeal." The appeals judge agreed with Vonage's argument that the amount of consumer churn that Vonage or any telco suffers from would surely mean disaster for their bottom line, were they denied an influx of new customers.

Comments

Re:Woo hoo

[Dunbal]

as long as they reveal how I can expunge that damned jingle from my brain.

      It's not a jingle, it's actually a song by a japanese girl band called the "5 6 7 8's", and it existed long before the commercials. You can also hear it in the movie "Kill Bill".

Re:this wouldn't be a problem for them

[sweatyboatman]

You seem to have missed the Vonage or any telco part of that quote. Customer turnover is cause by a lot of things, not just unsatisfactory service. People move, lose their jobs, get a good deal from their Cable company, etc. Yes, Vonage's customer service is mediocre at best and their cancellation policies and procedures are screwy. But Vonage as a whole is not particularly worse than Comcast, Verizon, or any other telephone provider.

The point here is that Vonage offers the same call quality and crappy service that your traditional telephone company offers, but they charge 50%-80% less. You, apparently, had a bad experience with them. But destroying Vonage (and other independent VOIP providers, who have just as much to lose here) would only empower Verizon to sue other competitors and keep their inflated, monopolistic rates.

I can't see how you could be in favor of that.

Call me, and I'll explain it.

[ScentCone]

Fundamentally, I don't even see why I'm still stuck paying a phone bill at all. I don't pay an email bill or a filesharing bill.

So, you were hoping that people would know how to reach you by dialing your IP address, perhaps? Who do you think maintains the ability to route calls, from both VoIP and 'analog' networks/carriers, to the number that's assigned to you? Should they be doing that as charity? Do you pay for the IP address you're using? A phone number is pretty much the same thing, only static. I'm guessing your home IP address is probably dynamic, as far as that goes.

Ever use your VoIP service to call a local business that's on POTS? Who do you think bridges that connection, the tooth fairy? And if you've got a technical solution for that process that doesn't cost anything or use any infrastructure, why aren't you sharing that with the rest of the billions of people with hard phone numbers?