Customers with the new plan can make unlimited landline or mobile number calls in 42 countries to places like Brazil, Costa Rica, Japan, Australia, [...]]]>

Vonage (www.vonage.com) has rolled out a World Premium Unlimited calling plan, adding unlimited calling to 20 more countries (total of 80), including unlimited calling to mobile phones in 42 countries.

Customers with the new plan can make unlimited landline or mobile number calls in 42 countries to places like Brazil, Costa Rica, Japan, Australia, France, Spain and the UK for one flat price. 

“Customers who use World Premium Unlimited to call as little as one hour a week to mobile phones in countries like Mexico and the UK will save over $400 a year versus the best pay per minute rates from major phone companies,” claims the Vonage press release.

Cost for the World Premiere Unlimited plan is $54.99 per month plus taxes and fees; you have to have a high speed Internet connection and a phone to take advantage.

As of the mid-April release date, Vonage says has 2.4 million subscribers.  That’s 2.4 million PAYING subscribers on plans ranging from $15 to $26 a month on upward.

Sooo, why hasn’t Skype killed these guys outright yet? Hmm… things to ponder as I roll out to Vegas next week.

The Vonage Mobile softclient has been kicking around for a while and is already available on the iPhone, BlackBerry and iPod touch devices (with the iPad no [...]]]>

Vonage (www.vonage.com) has announced that it has rolled out its Vonage Mobile offering/service to AT&T and T-Mobile Android devices… so what about those other (Verizon, Sprint) devices?

The Vonage Mobile softclient has been kicking around for a while and is already available on the iPhone, BlackBerry and iPod touch devices (with the iPad no doubt about 5 minutes away).  The softclient enables discounted international calling over WiFi and cellualr networks, as well as free domestic calls via WiFi.

Customers can choose between the Vonage World Mobile plan, which includes unlimited international calling to more than 60 countries, or a Vonage Mobile Pay-Per-Use plan; it provides savings of “more than 50 percent” compared to rates charged by wireless carriers for calls to a bunch of companies.

In addition to saving money, the app has the users’ existing contact list and uses the existing cell phone number so call recipients will recognize who is calling.

Vonage says the service will have custmers more than 50 percent on calls to [...]]]>

After plenty of foreshadowing statements on earnings conference calls, Vonage has released Vonage Mobile, a free downloadable application for low-cost international calling on smartphones.  The app is said to provide “seamless” low-cost international calling while on Wi-Fi or cellular networks.

Vonage says the service will have custmers more than 50 percent on calls to “dozens” of counties as compared to rates charged by wireless carriers — and no calling cards required.  Vonage Mobile will be available for download on the iPhone, iPod touch, and BlackBerry and features include the ability to use an existing contact list for click-and-dial, using the existing clel phone number for caller ID identification, and real time balance updates.

By the end of the year, Vonage says it will enhance the app to include the Vonage World plan initially intro’ed for home service in August, giving mobile customers to make unlimited calls to over 60 countries for one flat monthly fee.

While the concept of a mobile app to make long distance calls sounds “old,” Vonage is the largest independent carrier/ITSP to load up the concept and cooperation with Apple to make the app available through the Apple app store implies that Vonage has played nicely (i.e. maybe some sort of recurring revenue) with Apple.

Be interesting to hear the field reports once the app is more widely deployed.

Frost [...]]]>

Apparently, someone or someones is interested in pumping Vonage stock this week.   Or it may be some people are drinking the Kool-Aid because the stock has gone from under 50 cents a share to over $2 bucks in a weeks time. That whole 300 percent lift gets stock gurus all hot and sweaty…

Frost & Sullivan has some bizarre theory that Vonage is getting a lift from all the talk around Google Voice stimulating more interest in VoIP and therefore more interest in acquiring the company blah-blah…

I could see where an acquirer might be interested in Vonage since the company has cleaned up its act and tightened its belt.   Best Buy would be an interesting purchaser since they could clean house of Vonage’s expensive marketing department and integrate Vonage marketing into its promotional juggernaut.  Best Buy would get another service business – monthly recurring revenue good to smooth out peaks and valleys of consumer biz.  But, Best Buy would end up with a “competitor” to ooma and phone service offerings,  so that makes the idea a bit more blue sky.

Still, just because Vonage has submitted an iPhone app for sale in the iStore doesn’t mean everyone should get all excited. Apple is still trying to work out its story regarding Google Voice and we all know how that’s going…

The “Vonage World” plan provides unlimited calling around the world to more than 60 countries, including India, Mexico and [...]]]>

Running around last week, I didn’t have a chance to post anything about Vonage’s unlimited flat-rate calling plan and the throw-in of unlimited “readable” voice mail.  So I’m playing catchup and Vonage is playing catch-up.

The “Vonage World” plan provides unlimited calling around the world to more than 60 countries, including India, Mexico and China under the current flat monthly rate of $24.99.  It is interesting that this is happening at the same time where GigaOm is reporting that Skype is going to hike its connection fees for its “non-global” countries from 3.9 cents per call to 7.9 cents — but not the per minute calls. (PS: Om, if 6 cents per call is going to discomfort you from calling your mom on the weekends, you are one cheap bastard…it is SIX CENTS P-E-R call. How many times are you calling mom, dude? Let’s see, at 10 times per month, that’s 60 cents.) *ahem*

The Visual Voicemail service will provide unlimited readable voicemail delivered via either email or SMS text message. It’s cool, if I was starting from scratch I might be tempted, especially if/when (third quarter, where is it) the mobile client for smart phones comes out.

Vonage is rolling out new products; yes this is Good for the company.  But are all these new products too late to stop the bleeding of its customer base?  Third quarter and fourth quarter numbers are going to be very interesting.

Competitors for vanilla voice are numerous. You figure all the cheapskates (see above), have migrated to Skype and other soft-client alternatives.  Impulse buyers and “What do I get <fill-in-loved-one>?” and tech geeks will be tempted by ooma’s telo product at Best Buy and Radio Shack.    Cable has been pounding away with triple play bundles and phone companies are matching them.

I’ll give the current executive management at Vonage credit — they have got the company moving, and they’re prepared to go down swinging.  But the squeeze in churn is on, bunkies…

The half-empty argument is pretty straightforward and buried at the end of the company’s rah-rah “We’re in the black” verbiage. Vonage lost a net 89,000 subscribers [...]]]>

I’ve been spending the last day staring at the ocean and pondering what the latest financials for Vonage really mean.  Is the glass half empty or half full?

The half-empty argument is pretty straightforward and buried at the end of the company’s rah-rah “We’re in the black” verbiage. Vonage lost a net 89,000 subscribers last quarter, which is chump change with around 2.5 million subscribers on the books, but the company’s run rate in adding subs has slowed for a while, then went red last quarter with a  net loss of 6,000 subs.

For a while, Vonage was parroting the “When the economy is bad, we’ll gain because we’re a cheaper alternative to domestic phone service” babble, but the trend line for new subs is downward trending. Time to face facts: The very cheap are going to MagicJack and the thrifty-minded are taking advantage of triple-play bundling by telcos and cable companies.

Add onto this problem #2: Vonage’s monthly churn rate has risen from 3.1 percent per month to 3.2 percent.  No matter how you slice it, Vonage has been around the 3 percent range for churn, so this is an ongoing problem that they haven’t managed to manage yet.

Finally, we come to chronic problem #2: cost of customer acquisition.  This quarter, Vonage spent a whopping $363 per signed customer, a number that has gone UP  both from the last quarter and on a year-to-year basis. This time last year, Vonage spent $283 per customer, while last quarter the company “only” spent $290.

Double-wammie here is that market expense was down $14 million from the first quarter as Vonage “eliminated redundant spending, offset costs for prior period promotions and transitioned to a new marketing campaign.”  Sooo, they cut their marketing expenditures and raked in fewer customers per dollar spent — it ain’t pretty.

For the price of of what Vonage spent to acquire new customers, ooma would have given each customer new phone hardware, five years of phone service — and still have around $113 or so left over at list price (plus $20 more for the sale this week as ooma unloads generation 1 hardware).

Balance that against the half-full argument – record earnings of $31 million, making the seventh consecutive quarter of positive and increasing adjusted EBITDA.  There’s a bunch of new (for Vonage) products in the pipeline to leverage its existing customer bases, with plays in the mobile and international markets. Vonage also believes that its new marketing campaign will drive more customers…. we’ll see. It also has lowered its total cost in delivering phone service, but the costs per line are up about 9 cents. (Multiply by 2.5 million to figure out the real money).

Vonage has a long way to go before it breaks out the champagne.

My opinion of GigaOm tends to ebb and flow; right now it’s pretty ebbed.  Today’s “news” is the “discovery” — bootstrapped off of a Gadgetell post — that Vonage is working on a rolling out a smartphone app/mobile VoIP [...]]]>

“The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded.” Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars.

My opinion of GigaOm tends to ebb and flow; right now it’s pretty ebbed.  Today’s “news” is the “discovery” — bootstrapped off of a Gadgetell post — that Vonage is working on a rolling out a smartphone app/mobile VoIP client to allow its customers to get cheap minutes.

THIS. IS. NOT. NEW.NEWS. For shame!

Vonage has talked about this product for the last two earnings calls, and @Vonage_Voice/Michael Zema — who seems to be strong with the Force, in spite of some of his shilly tweets — was talking about about a Vonage smartphone app/cheap international voice minutes in mid-June, underlining what was said in the two conference call about Vonage working on new products to leverage their existing network.

*sigh*

I suppose it IS a slow news week, especially if you don’t want to write about security issues at Black Hat and DEFCON this week.

Michael Zema, one of Vonage’s PR guys,  outlined [...]]]>

Last month,  some folks believed Vonage’s “sounds good” campaign indicated the company was going to roll out a wideband service.  I went to the horse’s (or is it bird’s?) mouth: Vonage_Voice on Twitter and received confirmation that HD is not in the company’s near future plans.

Michael Zema, one of Vonage’s PR guys,  outlined the same game plan that came out of the company’s conference call last month:  A smartphone app to enable the use of Vonage service to dial international numbers at low rates using either cellular or Wi-Fi networks,  enhancing the core service with features currently offered at a premium for now additional cost, and better integration of voice and messaging services across all devices.

Virtual numbers — an old trick in the VoIP world, a newer one for Vonage and Verizon Business — also got underlined.  Vonage currently offers virtual numbers in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, UK, France, Ireland and Spain ranging from $4.99-$9.99 per month for both small business and residential customers.  Reading between the lines, Vonage will likely add on more countries to the virtual numbers list by the end of the year.

Michael also said Vonage was not working with Digium’s Switchvox IP PBX solution at this time.  If Vonage does offer SIP trunking for the SMB community, it might be nice to have a piece of CPE to offer customers on-premise functionality that doesn’t require a fully hosted solution.  (Yes, I know this upsets the “Host it all, and rake in the bucks!” of the Hosted VoIP community, but there will be businesses/vertical markets that require customized solutions going beyond vanilla hosted VoIP).

Digium’s Switchvox is one of two or three solutions in the marketplace that provides an open API for customization and sufficient features for the typical SMB.  As Digium’s VAR relationships start picking up steam, I think you should see more Switchvox/SIP trunking bundles; MegaPath and Digium made such an announcement at the end of May.