Vonage dials up $250 million more of VC funding |
Despite being a satisfied customer for nearly two years now (March 15, 2006), I must admit having greater hopes for Vonage (affiliate).
We still use them for most of our residential and business phone needs but it concerns me when I read that they are taking more Venture Capital funding. Om Malik did the math and came up with a total of $658 million Vonage has tapped from private investors. He also questions the value of the $2 billion valuation fueling these investments. Rightly questions, I think.
An IPO once seemed like a natural for Vonage but that hasn’t happened yet and with bigger fish adding VoIP capability, not to mention open API interaction, it’s just a matter of time before the table turns on Vonage if that hasn’t already happened.
I still think Vonage is a very good deal vs. the traditional phone company — especially for those with lots of lines — but I’m starting to see the (small) possibility of another move in the next few years which would have us paying much less for VoIP than we are paying now (which was nearly 75% of what we paid the traditional phone companies prior to that). I’ve found the quality of Vonage overall to be superior to Skype, so if we do switch to somebody else someday, they will need to offer comparable connectivity and call quality.
Oh, and speaking of switching services, the DirecTV installer just called and will be here in the next couple hours. Soon we’ll be deciding whether or not to give Comcast the boot. Comcast hasn’t really done anything wrong (except being more expensive than satellite), but getting 6 months of TV for free seems like a better deal than paying over $100/month. OnDemand is my favorite part of cable and that will be missed if we take the boxes back. We’re looking forward to having satellite again, though, as we always liked DirecTV.
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[…] Last time we checked in with the primary VoIP provider we’ve used almost two years now, Vonage, they had just dialed in 250 million in funding and today’s news has them cobbling together an IPO for — surprise, surprise — 250 million. Much less than anticipated. IPO details. […]
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