Vonage/Verizon

[me at mattgillen.net (Matthew Gillen)]

Mark Richards wrote:
> Matthew Gillen wrote:
>> gboyce wrote:
>>> Speakeasy has been purchased by Best Buy:
>>>
>>> http://www.speakeasy.net/press/pr/pr032707.php
>>
>> I think I've got it worse, Verizon is inches away from shutting down 
>> Vonage with patent violations:
>> http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/23/1730259
>>
>> I love that as Vonage customer, they have communicated *nothing* about 
>> this to me. They apparently issued a press release about it, but I
>> couldn't find a link to it from their front page, and the only way I knew
>> about it was from the comments on slashdot:
>> http://pr.vonage.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=235198
>>
>> I hope they win their appeal...
> 
> I'd like to know what it is that Verizon is claiming.  Does anyone have
> an idea? 

http://ipurbia.com/2007/03/verizon-patent-analysis.html
The killer one involves the technique to have VOIP-originated calls go to POTS
(plain-old telephone system) endpoints.  Without that ability, Vonage wouldn't
be able to sell to many people.

>  Seems to me that if Verizon was so upset it would have acted
> long ago.

I'm guessing they've been looking to bury Vonage for a while, and just figured
out how, or maybe our court system is just that slow.  Either way, Verizon has
lots of incentive to kill off VOIP providers that eat into their cash-cow.

Stupid gov't-sanctioned monopolies...

Matt

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