After following the Vonage patent war with Verizon and those now infamous three patents being upheld by the judge, it led me to dig even more for the real facts and the underlying mess.

After some digging, ended up at a great little wiki that has the nuggets:

Vonage Patent Wikia
The goal of this wiki is to determine the original non-obvious (aka patentable) innovation Verizon is defending.

It has links to the official US Patents as well.

Just some light reading for you to make your own decisions if Verizon really has a right or not. I love how “vague” the US patent office has allowed patents to be submitted and approved. These are prime examples of the wide openness that allows entities like Verizon to take such a wide berth.

You decide.. To me, it seems a shame that 2 of the 3 patents were even allowed to be patented, but that is just me! You decide.

Related posts:
Vonage – Missing Oxygen – But No Bullet
Vonage – Fire Sale / Part 2
Vonage – Fire Sale?
Vonage Outage

Well the judge has issued an order keeping Vonage from signing up any new customers. “Good-bye mall Vonage kiosk workers.. no job today.”

You can read the skinny at Russell Shaws write up:
Breaking news: Vonage barred from signing up new customers

So no bullet to the head yet. No new people, personally that is a good thing. They should not be signing up new folks just to get dumped in Vonage goes belly up because it can’t afford to pay Verizon and make any money. Heck they have been in the hole how long now for how much?

Tick, tick, tick… do you hear something?

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.