Posts Tagged ‘VoIP’

Is That Voice in Your App?

Om Malik | Tuesday, November 6, 2007 | 1:30 AM PT | 21 comments

Things have been tough as of late for plain vanilla VoIP service providers, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that voice over IP is over as a technology. As my good friend Andy Abramson points out, the focus in the future is going to be on adding voice to apps.

This was one of the trends I talked about when the now-defunct Business 2.0 launched its Next Net series in 2006. The idea behind the series was that as broadband became all-pervasive, everything from the web to mobile to video to voice became part of the next evolution of the Internet. (It has been a guiding principle of my coverage here on GigaOM.)

Fonality was one of the companies we picked for the list, because even at the time, Chris Lyman, Fonality’s CEO, was talking about adding voice to apps. He made a key move today, acquiring Insightful, one of SugarCRM’s largest resellers. The new offering from Fonality, called FonalityCRM, integrates the CRM suite with PBX and offers click-to-call dialing, agent screen pops and several other features.

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Sprint Patents Get Vonage Cash

Om Malik | Monday, October 8, 2007 | 8:39 AM PT | 4 comments

vonhq.jpgThe beleaguered VoIP provider Vonage (VG) has been taking it on the chin for so long that even a marginal bit of good news is worth noting. The company said today it has “settled its pending patent dispute with Sprint (S)” and has “entered into a licensing arrangement under Sprint’s Voice over Packet (“VOP”) patent portfolio.” The settlement has sent Vonage shares soaring this morning, up 73 percent to roughly $2 a share.

The agreement is valued at $80 million: $35 million for past license use, $40 million for a fully paid future license, and a $5 million prepayment for services. On Sept. 25, a Kansas jury handed down a verdict finding that Holmdel, N.J.-based Vonage had infringed six of Sprint’s patents. Vonage was asked to pay $69.5 million in damages.

Why is this good news? It’s one less thing for Vonage to worry about; now the company can focus all its energies on resolving the patent imbroglio with Verizon (VZ). The courts asked Vonage to pay $66 million to Verizon back in June. If they can resolve that issue, then they can get back to battling cable companies for customers.

Nothing But The V-Thang

Om Malik | Monday, September 24, 2007 | 10:30 AM PT | 23 comments

James Seng, a fellow VoIP blogger from Singapore, was in town last week. We met up one afternoon for coffee, and my first question to him was: Why are you blogging less about VoIP these days? He expressed dismay at the lack of excitement in the sector right now; after all, how many times can one drum up enthusiasm for a USB phone or a soft phone? We agreed that VoIP is stuck in a “cheap calling” rut, and that it doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon.

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