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

Of course, it STILL depends on your net connection

[tomhudson]

Got a lousy ISP?

Can you hear me?

Can you hear me now?

Bad lines - not just for cell phones anymore!

Woo hoo

[quokkapox]

Woo hoo hoo

Let them sign up all the new customers they want, as long as they reveal how I can expunge that damned jingle from my brain.

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".

Ain't Gonna Help

[The Dobber]

How many people are going to sign up knowing there is a possibility that Vonage will go tits up in the near future?

They're toast.

Re:Ain't Gonna Help

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people know that Vonage is in trouble? A handful of internet tech news readers only, I would wager...

Re:Ain't Gonna Help

[jambarama]

How many people are going to sign up knowing there is a possibility that Vonage will go *** up in the near future?
I can answer that. All of the people who don't know about the patent issues. Like my parents and most of my friends. I took a brief unscientific poll of the dozen people around me. About 3/4ths knew what VOIP was, and of those most knew Vonage. And of everyone, no one had heard of the patent dispute with Verizon.

I think we often overestimate how much the general public knows/cares about this stuff.

Re:Ain't Gonna Help

[timeOday]

Well, personally I do care. I dropped my landline for Vonage a couple years ago, and I'm happy enough. I couldn't speak to their customer service as I've never tried to use it, but the actual phone service seems fine enough to me. Granted, Vonage hasn't been very dynamic about introducing new features to keep people excited (why can't I set up separate voice mail boxes for family members?) but I do think it's saving me money. Mostly I just dread the hassle of finding a new provider and transferring my telephone number, what a pain.

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.

Re:Ain't Gonna Help

[bigpat]

Sunrocket and Packet8 look like promising VOIP providers. I'll be switching to one of these shortly. I never liked the idea of Vonage being the 100 Lb gorilla anyway, they seemed to be a good example of the proverb about keeping 'all your eggs in one basket'. And as The big player in independent PSTN VOIP interoperability they also seemed taylor made for Verizon to come along and kill them off as an example to others, so they could keep their market position.

Also seems that if this Verizon patent is valid and actually being used by anyone who routes calls from IP to PSTN, then Verizon could possibly use this to kill off Comcast and RCN phone services depending on how they have architected their systems. Though they would presumably have some alternative to IP routing since they control their own wires.

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.

Zestfully clean

[quokkapox]

Zestfully clean, you're not fully clean unless you're Zest-fully clean.

These things run through my consciousness without my permission. They've invaded my brain via the commercial mass-media during my childhood and adolescence. They are inescapable and pernicious. I'd like to buy the world a Coke.

Go ahead, tell me you've been raised in America and you don't have a corporate media advertising slogan running through the back of your mind now and then. Ancient Chinese secret, huh?

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?