I’ve been following the developments in the Verizon vs. Vonage patent infringement lawsuit with a great deal of interest. We’ve been Vonage customers for almost exactly two years, and, even though there are Vonage-bashers everywhere you turn, we have had very good luck with them. Consequently, I have been unhappy with each new development in the case, since they all seem to point to the inescapable end of Vonage. Most recently I read that Sprint might be interested in buying out Vonage as part of a deal that would resolve a different patent infringement dispute between those two companies, but it’s unclear if Sprint would actually offer the same service or just use the deal to squash Vonage.
With none of the news being terribly positive, I’ve been mulling over the need to change phone service providers as a pre-emptive action, lest we find ourselves with no local phone service one morning. One thing has been absolutely certain in my mind from the outset: there’s no way in hell that I would ever go back to being a Verizon landline customer. How anyone can let themselves be ass-raped month after month for the outrageous amount of money Verizon extorts for basic telephone service is beyond me. We were paying an average of $75/month to Verizon before including long-distance or any other services. After going with the unlimited calling package from Vonage for six months, I downgraded our service to the 500-minute package and only paid $14.99/month AND got all the services Verizon charges you extra for.
There are many other VoIP providers now, though none as well-established as Vonage. I’ve been sort of half-heartedly perusing the different “rate VOiP provider” websites like this one and this one, but some of these sites are bought and paid for by the VoIP providers themselves and aren’t necessarily as objective as they could be. And some of the providers themselves remind me waaaay too much of the shifty businesses that flooded the market when AT&T was broken up all those years ago. Amusingly enough, even Verizon now offers a VoIP service that undercuts its own landline business.
I’ve been nowhere near making a decision, but then out of the blue on Saturday morning a Comcast telemarketer called pitching their recent promotional bundle to add VoIP to your broadband package for $18/month for a year. Comcast isn’t exactly my favorite service provider either, I have to say, but given that they’re less likely to wink out of existence than Vonage or any of the other minor providers in the next twelve months, and given that the promo price is close enough to Vonage’s pricing, I bet.
At the end of the promotion, the price jumps from $18/month to $39/month, so you can bet that next May I’ll be looking for another provider, but now I have that time to watch the shakeout from the Verizon vs. Vonage case and see if anyone really comes out on top.
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