Vonage, Nortel call a truce -- no cash changing hands

Although the press release issued to announce the settlement between Vonage and AT&T earlier this month is still the shortest we've seen in all of 2007, we're pretty certain the one doled out to trumpet the truce between Vonage and Nortel is holding down the two-spot. In just five wee sentences, we learn that the two have agreed in principle to end the litigation pending between 'em, and though no cash will be changing hands, the agreement does involve a limited cross license to three patents per firm. Way to put the past behind before entering into the new year, we say.

[Abuzar @ Dec 31st 2007 10:24PM]

Do people even use Vonage? I don't even see their ads anymore. I guess they just don't have money left over for that stuff.

[Rocketboy @ Dec 31st 2007 10:58PM]

I don't. Sometime on October/November, my call connections have stunk on a random basis. There were about 2 weeks straight that we couldn't rely on Vonage to deliver both sides of a call. The other party could hear me, but I could not hear them. They also seem to have a bad habit of not updating their records when you go from one company to another, even when you take your phone number. They are to cancel service, but when we called to confirm (at the suggestion of Time Warner, who my phone is thru now) the account was still open, and billing had no record of the transfer of the phone number. They were great at one time, but they've been going downhill for quite some time...

[Josef @ Dec 31st 2007 11:06PM]

I've had very good service from Vonage for going on three years now. I think a lot of people who experience bad call quality can probably blame a sporadically bad internet connection or an improperly set router. I have my connection set to give the highest priority to the Vonage calls and it works out great.

[Rocketboy @ Jan 2nd 2008 12:31PM]

Unless Time Warner was starting to shaft my connection, which in turn was causing only one side of a conversation to be transmitted (and random loss of connection to Vonage's routers.. my internet was fine, but the phone adapter would lose connection), then it was Vonage. And if it was not, the new package deal that I'm in is cheaper than my regular service + Vonage.

[John @ Dec 31st 2007 11:07PM]

Wow, a story about Vonage where no one ends up getting reamed.

[Jared @ Jan 1st 2008 12:51AM]

I'm a very happy Vonage customer and, even with all of their litigation woes, I am really pulling for them to succeed. We have had problems only a couple of times but the outages were not long at all. I am very happy paying ~$18 for phone service, though we're getting ready to bump up to the $25 unlimited service in January.

[Matt @ Jan 1st 2008 6:55PM]

I have been with vonage for almost three years. I hope they will pull through. Verizon and at&t are simply trying to kill the competition. They see that more people were flocking to Vonage and started chickening out so they came up with the greatest invention - patent lawsuit. I wonder how companies can prove that another company willingly infringed on a patent??? It's not like Vonage built their routers and the equipment piece by piece (meaning starting from the transistors, resistors, IC chips, condensers etc..). They bought it from someone so obviously the manufacturer had to pay some kind of the license. Why are the big A-Holes go after the smaller guy is beyond me. That's why I strongly support smaller companies. I could go to at&t for my DSL at $20 per month but I chose to pay Cyberonic $50 because I can get better service and they don't give a damn what I use my pipe for. And one more minor thing...cyberonic won't turn over my details to the government like at&t did.