Vonage... Alive or Dead

I am sure that many of you who use Vonage have been watching the various financial / tech sites with eager anticipation the past few weeks.   For those of you who are not aware, Vonage was found to be in violation of many of Verizon’s patents surrounding VoIP communications.  As a result, a judge issued a stay against Vonage preventing them from signing on any new customers.

crap

I’ve used Vonage for nearly 2 years at this point and I have to say, I love it.  Sure, there were problems in the beginning, but it turns out that it was my internet connection that was the root of all the issues, not the Vonage service itself.  Of course, I suppose if you want to include the quality of any VoIP service; throwing more bandwidth at it is the solution. hrm…

In any case, when I read the terrible news about Vonage, I assumed, like so many others, that it was a death knell.  So, I started my search for an alternate provider and was not able to find anything that offered the same features for the same price. AT&T’s callvantage came close, but while it matched in price, it didn’t offer some of the niceties, like local phone #’s etc.

As a quick sidebar, that is probably one of the cooler features that Vonage offers, being able to get a local # in a different area code.  This way my parents and boss can both call local #’s and still get through.  I don’t have to pay long distance, and neither do they.  Good stuff.

Anyway, getting back to Vonage.  I have been looking and looking and unable to come up with anything that was decently priced and still got good reviews.  So, I decided to wait.

Turns out, waiting can pay off, and not just in the stock market.  Perhaps Verizon is the one that is acting a little shady in this whole thing. Perhaps Verizon stole those patents from somebody else…

So, Long story short, Vonage has gotten a stay on the stay.

They can sign up new customers again…

They’re still in business…

at least for now…