So last month was bad enough news about Vonage. April does not bring happy Easter eggs for them.

Check out Forbes article: Will Vonage Pay Up Or Shut Down?

Vonage business model has been bad since the IPO days.

Heck when Vonage spent ~$400.00 per new customer in 2006 on advertising, with a $30 bucks a month reward (picked the middle), I think my 4yr old daughter would know that math just don’t add up! Mighty big hole in the money bucket.

Tomorrow might shed some light on what the judge decides to do in terms of the short term.

Vonage is currently saying “most of their customers” have not shown a concern or called about switching to another company. So they feel the 2 million customers are not worried. Oh sure!

Other write ups regarding the matter:
Bloomberg.com – Vonage Seeks to Win More Time, Freeze Order Blocking Its Calls
With patent stay-ruling expected today, Vonage’s future could hang in the balance

Related posts:
Vonage – Fire Sale?
Vonage Outage

So with the recent rulings in the Vonage vs Verizon saga, has anyone given Vonage a toe tag yet?

Apparently Citigroup has: Citigroup Analyst Sticks ‘Sell’ on Vonage

This is definitely not good, since Citigroup led the Vonages IPO underwriting!

So what will happen to the 2+ million subscribers (me included) in April?

Go cable VOIP, go back to the POTs or wireless.

Well, it never fails when you talk about how you like one service over another, the other service fails!

Apparently Vonage has encountered a serious services outage. Vonage is aware of the problem (as noted by logging into your dashboard — if you can):

At this time some customers are experiencing intermittent issues receiving incoming calls. Our engineers are aware of the issue and are working towards resolving it as soon as possible.

Thank you for your patience in this matter and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Apparently around 2ish today the service went back down after coming up this morning.

You can follow the drama over at the Vonage Forum: No Dialtone!! Anybody else having this problem this morning?

Don’t we all love technology. Too bad this one is completely on Vonage side and not a “user config” error.

I love the message is putting out on incoming calls now:

The person you are trying to reach is not accepting calls at this moment. Please try your call again later.

Please stand by……

UPDATE:

If you can get logged into Vonage dashboard you will now see:

We apologize for any inconvenience, but we are currently
upgrading to provide you with better and faster service.

Better and faster, how about just service in general today guys.

In a post Skype Increases Cost of Calls, Silently? at Chris site, he brings to the front the nice thing Skype is doing to its users.

Chris pointed out Stuart post over at SkypeJournal the entire nastiness in “Skype Raids its Customer Base“.

Pssst, don’t tell anyone (we aren’t — Skype) we are going to tack on a few cents to each Skype call and call it a “connection fee”. No one will notice, since everyone makes long duration calls right! NOT

I guess they figure, someone has to pick up the tab for paying those Oompa-Loompas* to make your connection.

As a Vonage backer these days, I feel two things:

1. Vonage better not pull this trick, good thing I am on the buffet plan.
2. I knew there was a reason I didn’t go with Skype and now I have another.

Skype folks, doesn’t this pretty much steam you glass?

The irony I find in this entire thing is summed up in:
A communication company… has done a very lousy job communicating with their customers! Imagine that?

Skype, I give you a F for today and no star for you and go to the back of the line.

*No, Oompa-Loompas do not work for Skype and none were injured in the creation of this article.

So for all those Mac lovers out there, it sounds like Apple wants another fiver to get functionality that is in the Intel based Macs already. The 802.11n wireless networking functionality is currently disabled, but with a simple firmware update (all PC users are a little too familiar with) on their machine.

Source News article: Apple’s $5 Wi-Fi Fee Stirs Global Strife

If we all can ignore the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) mis-information ramblings, does anyone see anything wrong with charging for things that already exists in a product, but was not enabled because their were originally issuses?

If you bought a car, but noticed that the stereo wouldn’t play your CD’s and had to go back to the dealership and pay a couple extra bucks, would you be happy? “Oh you wanted the stereo to actually play CD’s? That feature costs extra for us to turn it on.”

Not cool. $5 firmware upgrade, what a shame. Sounds like Jobs has been hanging out with Sony management on their Playstation Store (which is free with your overpriced PS3) and will charge you for everything else. Can anyone say micropayments for your games to just have the cars and features you thought you got by actually BUYING the game? Does micropayments make it easier for us to all consume? I feel a bad trend starting here!

UPDATE:

Well it is not quite $5.00! You get to keep 3 singles and a penny in your pocket! Apple says it will be charging only $1.99, and it’ll be available for purchase on Apple’s website. How nice of Jobs. Apple said it is required under generally accepted accounting principles to charge customers for the software upgrade. You mean generally fattening of your bottom line.

“The nominal distribution fee for the 802.11n software is required in order for Apple to comply with generally accepted accounting principles for revenue recognition, which generally require that we charge for significant feature enhancements, such as 802.11n, when added to previously purchased products,” said Teresa Brewer, Apple’s Mac hardware public relations manager.

If it was a nominal distribution fee, why not charge 10 cents? Or better yet, Steve why don’t you put the dime in for all your Mac follower and just give them the “patch” for free!

Anyone seen this yet? wikileaks.org

“uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis”

Is this a good thing a bad thing or will make things better or worse.

If anything it might put Tor maybe in a more favorable / grown stance along with Freenet.