Vonage Admits They Have No Workaround 345
drachenfyre writes "It looks like Vonage has no workaround for their recent patent infringements. This means if a permanent stay isn't granted it is likely that it will be the end of the line for Vonage. What will happen if millions of phone customers suddenly lose their service? Their own filing to the court stated 'While Vonage has studied methods for designing around the patents, removal of the allegedly infringing technology, if even feasible, could take many months to fully study and implement.'"
Re:It's worse than that (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Only one appropriate response... (Score:3, Informative)
It's a quote from their own commercials. It's sung in the background to a silly tune while people do amaaaazingly stupid things.
It's more than appropriate, it might even be prophetic.
Re:It's worse than that (Score:3, Informative)
www.lingo.com
cheaper than vonage and more coverage (not that i ever have the desire to call europe, canada and mexico often or even the west coast come to think of it
Re:It's worse than that (Score:3, Informative)
Though depending on how Vonage's saga plays out, their futures may be uncertain as well.
Re:It's worse than that (Score:3, Informative)
But who's to know if Vitelity isn't also infringing. Does anyone know what the patents actually are? As I understand it, they were related to call termination--ie connecting a VoIP call to a POTS user. That could be a problem.
Re:More Info? (Score:3, Informative)
One thing to remember is that Verizon, AT&T, etc. really don't see much of a profit from regulated phone service, or even LD service - it's the add-on services (Caller ID, VM, three-way calling, etc.) that they make a mint on. With companies like Vonage around, people expect those services to be bundled in, which is the *real* danger, IMO.
Re:More Info? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:More Info? (Score:4, Informative)
Verizon-Vonage patent analysis Part One: 6,282,574 [zdnet.com]
Verizon-Vonage Patent analysis Part Two: 6,104,711 [zdnet.com]
Verizon-Vonage Patent analysis Part Three: 6,359,880 [zdnet.com]
Re:So what will happen? (Score:3, Informative)
Without knowing if VoiceWing advertises that it supports fax service I can tell you that the compression algorithms used to send VOIP voice data are lossy in a way that breaks fax data. So unless they explicitly provide support for fax data you shouldn't expect it to work, just a result of the data compression formats that most VOIP uses.
Re:stalemate (Score:1, Informative)
Re:stalemate (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_examiners#Uni
Re:No real meat here... (Score:2, Informative)
http://www22.verizon.com/forhomedsl/channels/dsl/