I’m seeing some strange things about Verizon suing Vonage over some aspect of Voice over IP technology – even as far as asking for an immediate “cease and desist” offering service to all their customers. Most analysts say that Verizon is gravely worried over the loss of many of their customers [myself included – although I certainly give them enough money for my Fios connection] to Vonage and other VoIP providers.
This concerns me since I’m a customer. What happens if they’re successful? They will kill Vonage. I doubt they’ll get all they ask for, but it’s still not good for the industry. No one even saw this coming – there were no earlier “confrontations” in which Verizon told Vonage to “stop or we’ll sue” or some such. If they succeed at taking Vonage out of the picture, it does not bode well for the other much smaller competitors out there. Then, I’ll be back where I was – stuck with Verizon and a monopoly.
I checked out Verizon’s competing service and for a begining, it’s not too bad – it’s even the same price as Vonage, but there aren’t near as many features. No “virtual phone numbers” and I didn’t see pricing for a fax line, either.
I guess we’ll have to watch and see…
::: jeffphillips.org ::: 