Lawsuits A Plenty!

Did I miss the memo or something? In a little less than two weeks all of these patent lawsuits just appeared in the VoIP industry.

1) Net2Phone is suing Skype for patent infrigement (like Al Gore, Net2Phone is claiming that they invented the internet and VOIP)

2) Verizon is suing Vonage for patent infringement (they just don't like Vonage stealing all of their customers and want them to close up shop)

3) Rates Technology Inc. Is suing Google Talk for patent infrigement (something about a routing technology Google uses)

I think it is just a coincidence that all of the players being sued in the VOIP world have deep pockets and lots to loose. A year ago you couldn't sue anyone as nobody had money and those that did have a bit would have just shut their doors rather than give the money away in a frivolous lawsuit.

Well at least the lawyers will make money out of these lawsuits!

Vonage IPO

I know Vonage was looking for buyers for some time and since they could not find anyone willing to pay their price they went with plan B, going public. This month they did their IPO and shares started selling at $17 and then fell drastically within hours.

It looks like their share prices were overvalued at opening and as a result fell to levels investors felt were more adequate for the company. The real issue is are these stocks really worth over $10 a share... Better yet are they worth over $5? Vonage is known to be a very non-profitable entity spending millions and millions of dollars to acquire customers. AOL used to do this way back when and on average it took AOL 2 years on each customer before they started making a profit on that individual and now Vonage has been trying the same thing. They were never worried about profitability and a good ROI, all they wanted was a huge customer base so they could sell their business to investors based on that alone.

Problem is anyone who was to buy them or invest in them realized that besides a huge customer base they would be left with a business that just sucks up cash and brings very little back to the table.

To read up further on this visit: http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3611221

InteleCard News - Oh How the Mighty Have Fallen

I just received the latest issue of the InteleCard News magazine and all I can say is that my weekly A&P circular is bigger than this magazine! The once dominant magazine for the prepaid community, like the industry, is definitely a shadow of its former self. They can't even squeeze out 100 pages anymore, and a good portion of the ad space was used by them trying to sell everyone on buying ads in the magazine.

While I was never a huge fan of the magazine as it's content was determined by those companies that contributed the most in advertising dollars, I think this magazine was once one of the determining factors in a companies success or failure. Now it just seems like the industry has passed this publication by... Surviving mostly on ads from prepaid wireless companies, the reality is that this industry is not big enough to keep this publication going. If it was not for their two shows still selling good amounts of booths, I think this magazine would have been history already.

The shows still seem to attract enough exhibitors but I have to say they are a shadow of their former self... My recommendation to the people at intelecard... Lower your ad pricing, reduce your shows to once a year and acknowledge that it just was not what it used to be! After all we in the industry have realized that and have made the adjustments accordingly.