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Vonage Admits They Have No Workaround
drachenfyre writes "It looks like Vonage has no workaround for their recent patent infringements. This means if a permanent stay isn't granted it is likely that it will be the end of the line for Vonage. What will happen if millions of phone customers suddenly lose their service? Their own filing to the court stated 'While Vonage has studied methods for designing around the patents, removal of the allegedly infringing technology, if even feasible, could take many months to fully study and implement.'"
There is SunRocket.
It always ruins a joke to explain it. -sigh-
It's a quote from their own commercials. It's sung in the background to a silly tune while people do amaaaazingly stupid things.
It's more than appropriate, it might even be prophetic.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
good alternative
...) though i wonder now that vonage is under the gun, if lingo will be next, i haven't found any info yet on what the patent covers
www.lingo.com
cheaper than vonage and more coverage (not that i ever have the desire to call europe, canada and mexico often or even the west coast come to think of it
One of the other independent VoIP's: Packet8, BroadVoice, Skype (In/Out)...
Though depending on how Vonage's saga plays out, their futures may be uncertain as well.
Death and danger are my various breads and various butters.
I like Vitelity.net. Depending on the Vonage adapter you currently have, you may be able to unlock it so you can use it with another provider. If you search the bargainshare.com forums, you can find instructions for most, if not all of them.
But who's to know if Vitelity isn't also infringing. Does anyone know what the patents actually are? As I understand it, they were related to call termination--ie connecting a VoIP call to a POTS user. That could be a problem.
Because Verizon has no interest in licensing the patent to Vonage - they're seeking an injunction preventing Vonage from using the technology, which mean no competing VoIP. The monetary damages they're seeking are for past infringement, not licensing fees for future use.
One thing to remember is that Verizon, AT&T, etc. really don't see much of a profit from regulated phone service, or even LD service - it's the add-on services (Caller ID, VM, three-way calling, etc.) that they make a mint on. With companies like Vonage around, people expect those services to be bundled in, which is the *real* danger, IMO.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I found a blog, which goes into some detail, about 3 patents in this dispute.
Verizon-Vonage patent analysis Part One: 6,282,574
Verizon-Vonage Patent analysis Part Two: 6,104,711
Verizon-Vonage Patent analysis Part Three: 6,359,880
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
the service is not as good - voice quality is ok, but faxes fail
Without knowing if VoiceWing advertises that it supports fax service I can tell you that the compression algorithms used to send VOIP voice data are lossy in a way that breaks fax data. So unless they explicitly provide support for fax data you shouldn't expect it to work, just a result of the data compression formats that most VOIP uses.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_examiners#Uni
Yes, they sell naked dsl. They just don't want anyone to know about it. Mine was just activated yesterday.
d ryloop/
http://www22.verizon.com/forhomedsl/channels/dsl/