[asterisk-biz] Vonage Files IPO

[Sudhir Kumar]

Some of you might have seen this story, but many of you might not. 

http://www.thestreet.com/_googlen/tech/telecom/10267272.html

I found it quite surprising that Vonage had $174 million revenue but
$176.3 million in marketing expenses alone for 9 months of 2005. Even if
we completely discount the marketing expenses, they still had a net
operating loss of $13.3 million for 9 months.

With big telcos and cable operators aggressively entering VoIP market
and smaller Asterisk powered providers chipping away business from cost
conscious consumers as well as businesses, do you think Vonage has long
term potential despite their early success?

In January alone, 6 small businesses switched to us from Vonage, citing
that our voice quality was better than Vonage, and we offer a lot better
features for only a little more extra. Based on the smallest unreliable
sample, my guess is that Vonage will be a very small player in business
market. Cable operators are still gouging consumers for broadband
service, and Telcos are coupling DSL with phone service in most of the
USA. Hence Vonage will find it increasingly difficult to run a
profitable operation with consumers alone IMHO. What do you guys think.

More importantly, what do you think will be a successful business model
for us small VoIP providers?     

-- sudhir