Vonage Offering In-Home Service
One of the my criticisms of Vonage has been the fact many consumers don't want to fool around with installing a router and then try to get all the telephone jacks in their home to work - as opposed to using a base station and cordless phones. Well, it appears Vonage is moving into the home-installation business by offering service in New Jersey and five boroughs in New York City. Vonage plans to expand the service to 50 U.S. cities later this year. This is a much-needed move to get Vonage into the mainstream, although it could be an expensive proposition unless the consumer agrees to pay for the convenience. One of the reasons cablecos are doing so well in cable telephony is in-home service, which makes it easy to get on the VoIP bandwagon. A good example is Videotron, which has signed up for than 160,000 cable telephony customers in the past year. Hat tip to Russell Shaw for picking up the news. By the way, whatever happened to Vonage's IPO? Apparently, the company was poised to make a filing with SEC but it's really, really quiet out there.
