Vonage is looking to prevent its VoIP ship from sinking by making a switch over to wireless side of world. And this news comes with a new name for the cheap calls for all provider- rebranded as Vonage Wireless. According to a BusinessWeek report, Vonage is planning the MVNO route as it struggles with falling customer acquisition rate for its traditional business and competition intensifies from cable companies, bad-old telcos, and likes of SunRocket, Skype,… which are all eating into Vonage’s market share. And all this is happening while Vonage fights out with Verizon over patent dispute related to use of the core technology behind its system. The patent claims, which cover pretty broad part of Vonage service including fraud detection, billing, and features such as call-forwarding, threaten the very existence of Vonage service and other VoIP providers.
Coming back to the MVNO plans, Vonage has not disclosed much details in regards to what exactly it plans to offer. Will it be another hippy targeted Virgin Mobile in making, or Vonage would finally try to do something disruptive, which we have no hopes off. According to BW, during its last earnings call Vonage had indicated that it will start selling dual-mode phones offering cellular as well as Wi-Fi access. Bigger issue will always remain the same, where does Vonage get the WiFi beamed onto these mobiles. Partnerships with Clearwire, Earthlink(which, by the way won the Houston WiFi buildout contract last week) could give its WiFi phones broader coverage. On the whole I can see a pretty patchy plan in making that would somehow manage to wade the Vonage ship forward.
February 20, 2007 at 3:19 pm |
[...] Original post by Vivek and software by Elliott Back [...]