The crows have come home to roost for Vonage. The company has admitted that it has no workaround to navigate past Verizon's patents, and that such a workaround may not even be feasible. Interim CEO Jeffrey Citron has declared that one of the first belt-tightening moves will be to axe former CEO Mike Snyder's dot-com era marketing programs. Customer acquisition costs have ballooned to $306 per subscriber in the most recent quarter.
Old-style telecom business model + new technology = incremental improvement, not disruption.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
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I think that's a tenuous argument. Arguably, the public interest is served if they can continue to service their existing customers. I'd imagine they could be profitable with a reduction in marketing expenditures, also. Which would imply to me that if they want to grow they either have to license Verizon's tech, or find a workaround. My bet's on the license.
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