I’d make two deals very quickly..First is I would by SiPPhone because it simply works and already follows open standards…SIP.
Then I would buy Vonage because it fits into the News Corp strategy of buying assets that already have market share and a team. When you add in the SipPhone technology team and scalable infrastructure to Vonage’s street-fighter approach of get customers regardless of cost you end up with a very strong one – two punch.
Now, after you buy SipPhone you likely lose Michael Robertson, but the team he’s built can easily do the job to keep SipPhone up and running. With Vonage you will lose Jeffrey Citron but there are some folks inside Vonage who actually know what to do at the higher levels of management. The middle rungs of management can be replaced and New Corp with their checkbook can begin recruiting and expanding the team, likely picking up some soon to be available execs from MCI, AT&T, Verizon and SBC due to either being packaged out or trimmed.
Then I’d quickly figure a way to get in bed with Google. News Corp at the end of the day is all about ads. Every thing the do is driven to having the medium to drive ads which they sell. Google is the big threat to them in this arena long term so figuring out how to work together with Google is best for the Murdochs and their shareholder.