Vonage Allowed to Sign New Customers 47
terrymr writes "The Court of Appeals for the federal circuit has stayed the injunction against Vonage pending their appeal." The appeals judge agreed with Vonage's argument that the amount of consumer churn that Vonage or any telco suffers from would surely mean disaster for their bottom line, were they denied an influx of new customers.
Of course, it STILL depends on your net connection (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you hear me?
Can you hear me now?
Bad lines - not just for cell phones anymore!
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Is someone working reconfiguring Vonage hardware (Score:1)
How much rocket science will it take to make this work with other VoIP setups... uh, before Verizon's lawyers go after them, too?
Re:Is someone working reconfiguring Vonage hardwar (Score:1)
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Because the little VoIP box from Vtech works fairly well with the two portable phones that work with it. Here's the version I have. [engadget.com] It's a dedicated system, so I'd like to reuse them (instead of buying 2 new portable phones) instead of tossing them out when Vonage gets gutted by Verizon.
Woo hoo (Score:5, Funny)
Woo hoo hoo
Let them sign up all the new customers they want, as long as they reveal how I can expunge that damned jingle from my brain.
Re:Woo hoo (Score:4, Informative)
It's not a jingle, it's actually a song by a japanese girl band called the "5 6 7 8's", and it existed long before the commercials. You can also hear it in the movie "Kill Bill".
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And that's a cover of the song performed in the 50's by the Rock-A-Teens - no relation to a later band of the same name.
Zestfully clean (Score:5, Funny)
Zestfully clean, you're not fully clean unless you're Zest-fully clean.
These things run through my consciousness without my permission. They've invaded my brain via the commercial mass-media during my childhood and adolescence. They are inescapable and pernicious. I'd like to buy the world a Coke.
Go ahead, tell me you've been raised in America and you don't have a corporate media advertising slogan running through the back of your mind now and then. Ancient Chinese secret, huh?
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The damned song I can't get out of my head is "conjuction-junction, what's your function....hookin' up words..."... ARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH.
I mostly watched tv on Saturday mornings. Boarding school 'n all that. Still it was really educational as a Canadian finding out how US laws got made. Funnily enough
Tough 'Call' (Score:1)
On the other, Vonage thinks customers just naturally leave at random and not because they might be unhappy with their service.
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On the one hand, Verizon with an idiot patent.
I am not sure if "idiot" is the correct word, but I can't think of a better one.
On the other, Vonage thinks customers just naturally leave at random and not because they might be unhappy with their service.
Quite true.
On one hand, the patent situation is out of hand. On the other hand, well, I have a tough time saying who I would want to win this lawsuit. (Although I am leaning towards Verizon.)
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So, people with poor internet service will try Vonage and leave, others will try it and find it to be very good. You also have cases where people would lea
Ain't Gonna Help (Score:5, Insightful)
They're toast.
Re:Ain't Gonna Help (Score:5, Insightful)
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Brian Williams and his ilk start blabbing about it and it could very well go back from cutting off O2 to a bullet to the head as scared consumers start bailing like rats off an sinking ship.
Personally I PRAY it survives. I love the $15 I pay for phone service. I dont call many ppl, but those I call most are L/d. And to make matters worse I am in a virtual black hole of cell service so I
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Now losing 'Net connectivity? THAT would be bad.
Re:Ain't Gonna Help (Score:5, Insightful)
Fundamentally, I don't even see why I'm still stuck paying a phone bill at all. I don't pay an email bill or a filesharing bill.
Call me, and I'll explain it. (Score:4, Informative)
So, you were hoping that people would know how to reach you by dialing your IP address, perhaps? Who do you think maintains the ability to route calls, from both VoIP and 'analog' networks/carriers, to the number that's assigned to you? Should they be doing that as charity? Do you pay for the IP address you're using? A phone number is pretty much the same thing, only static. I'm guessing your home IP address is probably dynamic, as far as that goes.
Ever use your VoIP service to call a local business that's on POTS? Who do you think bridges that connection, the tooth fairy? And if you've got a technical solution for that process that doesn't cost anything or use any infrastructure, why aren't you sharing that with the rest of the billions of people with hard phone numbers?
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I've also had occasion to call Vonage service twice, once to inquire about how many Vonage boxes could be placed on a single cable modem connection and another time when my Vonage box stopped working with a strange sort of ARP resolution failure. In the first case I received surprisingly precise and helpful information with minim
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Also seems that if this Verizon patent is vali
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Re:Ain't Gonna Help (Score:5, Insightful)
I can answer that. All of the people who don't know about the patent issues. Like my parents and most of my friends. I took a brief unscientific poll of the dozen people around me. About 3/4ths knew what VOIP was, and of those most knew Vonage. And of everyone, no one had heard of the patent dispute with Verizon.
I think we often overestimate how much the general public knows/cares about this stuff.
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MOD PARENT UP (Score:1)
Me For One (Score:2)
I've been thinking about signing up with Vonage for a while now, but just haven't gotten around to it.
When I heard about the injunction, I went right over and signed up, since I figured it would be a few hours until it went into effect, even if it didn't get stayed (which it soon did).
If Vonage goes out of business, it'll take a while. And I can always switch to my cable company's VOIP. I had been dithering b/c my cable's VOIP is twice as expensive, but it's supposed to be better quality (since they u
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The NeXT level of phone (Score:1)
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Companies don't do anything that doesn't make them money. They've got a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to make a profit. They won't share unless they'll make money from sharing, or at least not lose money because of sharing.
While corporations may legally be people, they have none of the good attributes that people have, like altruism, empathy or selflessness.
this wouldn't be a problem for them (Score:1, Interesting)
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The point here is that Vonage offers the same call quality and crappy
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Perhaps if they'd provided some sort of added value over my cellphone service they would have been able to turn that profit on me. However, they didn't. So - why am *I* the one expected to pay a fee? I'm not the one who sells a subpar service with an annoying-as-fuck jingle.