Internet im service

Just when you thought its legal troubles were over, Vonage gets involved in another legal squabble with telecommunications equipment maker Nortel Networks. On Friday, Nortel filed a lawsuit against Vonage claiming that the voice provider has violated nine patents related to its Internet phone service, including features such as 911 and 411 calling and click to call. The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware, comes in response to a suit Vonage is pursuing against Nortel. In 2004, a company called Digital Packet Licensing sued Nortel for infringing on three of its patents. Vonage acquired Digital Packet Licensing last year and is continuing the lawsuit. For more than a year, Vonage has been caught up in one patent lawsuit after another. AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and Verizon Communications have all ***

(Credit: Skype)Yes, you read the headline right. I have long been a critic of Skype, suggesting that eBay was foolish to buy the VoIP toy and generally ridiculing it as a serious business tool. Today I'm eating crow, and it tastes great. Why? Because Vonage has been complete rubbish for me, whereas Skype is increasingly approaching perfection. I dropped my traditional phone service for Vonage. I'm now about to drop my traditionally awful Vonage for Skype. I have been a Vonage customer since May 2004. ***

A company called Sandvine, which sells bandwidth management gear to Internet service providers, claims that more than 1,100 voice over Internet protocol service providers are operating worldwide as of April 5th. The majority of these players are small "mom and pop" operators, as well as free services like Skype. The proliferation of VoIP providers goes to show the beauty of the Internet protocol. Because voice simply becomes another application running on top of IP, it's easy for new players to enter the market without actually owning the underlying infrastructure. But just because it may be easy to become a VoIP provider, it doesn't mean these companies will all survive. As the big phone companies and cable companies start offering their own VoIP services, it will be interesting to see how many of the smaller guys will survive. One big question is whether or not phone and cable companies will begin blocking VoIP traffic from other providers on their networks. ***