VonageLovesYou, Even if You Don’t

Om Malik, Monday, October 22, 2007 at 8:35 PM PT Comments (7)

It could pass as a cute little gesture, but somehow it smacks of desperation. The beleaguered VoIP service provider, Vonage (VG) has been in a ton of trouble, getting sued left, right and center by any telco with a VoIP-related patents. The legal worries are causing potential customers to pause and rethink before signing up for Vonage’s service. In order to lure them, Vonage has introduced a new website, VonageLovesYou.com, and is offering three months of phone service for $9.95-a-month, and is throwing in a free router, just to sweeten the deal. (Thanks to all of you who sent this tip.)

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7 comments so far

October 22nd, 2007
10:59 PM PT
Alex said:

Holy Toledo! I have not looked at their balance sheet lately, but it has to be bleeding lots of red.
1) Promotion that is costing them money. Router costs is probably greater than $25 alone.
2) Sprint lawsuit $80M
3) Verizon lawsuit $58M
4) AT&T lawsuit TBD

5) 5.5% royalty to Verizon going forward (new sales)
6) 5% royalty to Spring going forward (new sales)
7) AT&T royalty - TBD

8) Customer acquisition costs?
9) Increasing customer churn

…..damm, this does not look good for Vonage shareholders,imo.

October 23rd, 2007
6:50 AM PT
Dhiren said:

with all the cash they collected in IPO, sure the’ll love us

October 23rd, 2007
7:15 AM PT
Denis said:

6) 5% royalty to Spring going forward (new sales)

I don’t think that they have to pay Sprint a percentage. I thought that they did a settlement with Sprint and that did not include a percentage…

http://www.redherring.com/Home/22938

October 23rd, 2007
10:05 AM PT
dave said:

…and i love vonage back, seriously, my bill is always low, like under 25ish bucks, and i used to pay over 80 for identical services and features…plus it’s backup - isn’t everybody all mobile now???

October 24th, 2007
12:27 PM PT
David said:

Seems like a router has always been tossed in though. I got mine for free and didn’t do any special deal.

January 7th, 2008
10:17 PM PT
roman nakonechnyy said:

Gees vonage’s sucks when my v-tech modem device broke nobody came to fix it or even answer hundreds of times I called vonage to help me fix the phone they charged me for 2 months but it still not fixed

January 18th, 2008
12:00 AM PT

[...] Berninger, Friday, January 18, 2008 at 12:00 AM PT Comments (0) The $250 million Vonage burned through as a result of the patent lawsuit brought by Verizon et al provides yet another example of why [...]

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