In what is another entry in the converged device universe, Linksys and Vonage have announced the release of a combined WiFi, router, access point and Vonage telephone adapter. This appears to be the same product with a different product code that BestBuy already offers from CallVantage.
I’ve e-mailed Vonage spokesperson Mitchell Slepian to ascertain if existing customers can migrate over to the device or if this is only for new customers. There seems to be no published easy way to migrate up to new devices with Vonage.
The inability to easily transfer numbers to new equipment a weak spot in my opinion as it clearly indicates that Vonage wants the new activations with additional numbers to help mitigate churn in order to show growth.
Related to this, it is clear that Linksys has the early lead in the category after Cisco and Sipura jumped into the fray first, followed by Motorola and eventually d-Link. Linksys, with Cisco’s backing is agressively working to execute a top to bottom strategy and appears to carrier neutral. I expect to see others like Netgear and SMC get more agressive in the VoIP space this year or by CES time in January.