How Is Vonage First?

Vonage executives like to live in their own world. They only talk about what’s important to them. They don’t reply to questions that may not be advantageous for them to answer and they hold off commenting until people may forget they asked the question. This has become more apparent ever since the 911 fiasco is Florida, as their spokespeople seem to be less anxious to comment.

Now they are making statements that are not correct in press releases.

“Vonage is pleased to offer its customers the world’s first broadband enabled cordless phone system, as the company is always seeking to offer a variety of hardware choices for its innovative flat-rate, full featured calling plans that are rapidly becoming the touchstone of the telecommunications market,” stated Jeffrey A. Citron, chairman and CEO of Vonage Holdings Corp.

This is on face false. Already Packet 8 has shown and is shipping their Uniden powered broadband enabled phone system. They showed it to me at SuperComm and have been offering it on their web site for some time

News of the Uniden product has been out for over a month and others have commented on it as well.

So what are they claiming that makes it first?

It has a router built in. Whoopee. Given how little uptake there has been on their Linksys offer for a free wireless router, I have to wonder if people want to switch to VTech from their already installed router.

I’m sorry, but Linksys, Netgear, D-Link, SMC, Belkin, and a host of others are already in the Broadband Router market. They have installed users. They have proven reliability and in many cases they are legacy technology that has been built on technology platforms that have been IT industry tested. Along comes a consumer brand in VTech, which while they make good phones, is asking someone to buy into the unknown when it comes to performance and reliability. While I’m sure this is a nice device for the casual home user, I don’t think the early adoptive power user will be swapping out their routers or wireless routers to fast for something like this. Also, since it’s not WiFi enabled that means users still need an access point to go wireless if they eliminate their older WiFi enabled router.

So eliminate one piece, but to advance add another. Sorry, on face for the already wireless home, the new VTech just doesn’t add up.