In what has to be the echoes of the sounds from the tribes starting to play the death drums for Vonage on Wall Street, the New York Times Small Business section today had a story about alternatives.
What’s interesting is that the story listed both Verizon’s VoiceWing and AT&T’s CallVantage, two products that have had very little marketing and Packet8, a company which has recently signaled their intentions to be more of a small business player. The story also calls attention to the MSO’s in the New York area, including Time Warner and Cablevision.
Notably missing from the story are Earthlink’s True Voice, Broadvoice, VoicePulse and Lingo by Primus, three companies that are focusing directly on the consumer market first, but who also support the small business markets. Also missing from the story is AIM PhoneLine and GizmoProject where IM/Voice services were mentioned, but Yahoo and Microsoft Messenger along with Skype all made the cut.
Basically what this tells me is that the world will survive without Vonage, if they go away, as there are lots of options, and in reality many more than those mentioned that will be there to fill the gap.
Oh, and when did Vonage ever target the real small business market? For that there are plenty of quality VoIP providers, like clients Telephony2, Junction Networks or even Fonality who do things right for small and growing businesses.