AT&T jumps on the bandwagon, sues Vonage
It’s safe to say that this is not Vonage’s year. First, the company gets bopped with lawsuits from Sprint and Verizon. Sounds bad, right? Yeah. Could it get any worse? Yeah. AT&T has just announced that they will be bringing suit against the beleaguered VoIP company. Claiming that Vonage has violated a single patent relating to internet telephony access, the company said that the recent lawsuits by Verizon and Sprint forced their hand. AT&T has apparently been attempting to reach an out of court settlement for the last two years, but has been unable to come to any sort of mutual agreement. Vonage, for their part, has expressed a desire to remain at the bargaining table. Of course they would…it’s unclear exactly how much AT&T is asking for, but we’re guessing it will be on par with the recent demands from Verizon and Sprint. Sorry, Vonage. We used to love you, too.
I’m all for respecting Patents (when they’re legitimate and not for something obvious.) but Vonage getting slammed like like this likely a ploy by the traditional telcos to sue them out of existence. very Sad.
This is getting pretty scary since I am already in the process of porting my number over to vonage.. Is this gonna affect me? Is the phone service good?
Vonage is great! We have it here in the U.S. and so does my family in Canada. My family then moved to Egypt, still have Vonage and got to keep their Canadian phone number and so whenever they call us, it’s free. And when I call them from my cell, I get charged as if I were calling to Canada (which is cheap) when they’re really in Egypt.
Vonage is really cool and it sucks that the’re getting blasted like this.
I’ve never really understood Vonage’s business model. the big telecom companies will force you to purchase land line service before they’ll activate your DSL connection (and yes, I know you could avoid them entirely by opting for cable or FIOS or the like, but that’s not as widely available in most of the country) so if you opt for Vonage you’re paying twice for your phone service. the free long distance is neat, but it kind of makes your cellular service look a bit silly. even before this lawsuit, the Bells had Vonage by the balls. I don’t really like to admit it, but until the government does something about AT&T, ALL customers lose. (this isn’t even to mention AT&T’s staunch unwillingness to offer any HD service as anything but an above-and-beyond a la carte to their u-verse lineup. ever try and ask for just the HD service with nothing else?)
oh, and Chris, Vonage is getting crapped on with doom-y news seems like every other week of late. if it’s not too late, you might want to reconsider– at least until it’s a bit more apparent if and when Vonage will stop business completely. it wasn’t long ago (a couple of months?) when Vonage was prohibited from signing up ANY new customers.
Telcos fear vonage like the music industry fears napster or any file sharing sites
So much for fair play. It’s a shame that Vonage continues to get picked on for patents that the Telcos don’t/barely utilize. I guess AT&T figured it’s more $$$ to the quarterly report. Maybe it’s time to completely switch over and dump AT&T.
I’m not a patent lawyer and I doubt any of you are but if they did violate the patent then they need to pay. If not then its all another waste of time like most of Galvatron’s posts.
Napster Gal is a legit music site…now get back to cleaning the floors.
I think I have an old speak `n spell layin around….
I think they’re violating my patent for VOIP service…maybe I’ll sue too……..
Vonage is a horrible company. I know I used to work there.. They screw over there customers and employees and don’t even care if your wife is giving birth. They told me if I leave I lose my job and since I had benefits from them the hospital bills needed to be paid so I had to miss the birth of my daughter. I hope AT&T sues the balls off of them its not like they dont have other people to work. I hope they go out of business and soon too!!!
i have Vonage for the last 1.5 years for my business used to pay at&t around $350-400/mo now with Vonage i’m is less than $100/mo. I love Vonage, but it looks like the big dogs what them out of business, that is verry bad, they should not let them get in business. After they become successfull everybody is triing to take them out. Competition is good for us the consumer.
Everyone needs to collectively leave AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. Fix the problems.
AT&T slammed my Vonage phone number I had for over three years. AT&T gave away my number two months ago to a stand-alone for DSL. I been getting sporadic calls from the AT&T customers to my Vonage phone because of the DSL. I have been trying to sort this out with AT&T. They could not believe two people have the same number. They said I was wrong and didn’t transfer in time. But I have documentation and they had no right to give my number away and interfere with my Vonage service. They try to fix the problem by giving the AT&T customer with my number a new number. Good. Not! They now have a phone message that redirects to her computer. Duh! And when you call that number it tells you it can’t take any incoming calls. Now, no one from AT&T can call me.
Vonage is having to contact them for slamming my number and getting that message off. Vonage has been good to me. I have service with AT&T with residential line and DSL. I am not very happy with AT&T as the last person in customer service that I talked with was rude and said it was my fault about the situation. She would only help me if I switched back. Unbelievable.