Vonage

Which VoIP companies are up for sale now? Which aren't?

Doug Mohney — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:42:35 -0500

VoIP companies that (likely) aren't for sale

You can never say never, but anyone who has managed to take down another round of venture capital money since September is unlikely to take a quick buyout offer. Their backers are happy with the existing business model and have enough faith in both the potential upside and current management to wait out the storm for the next couple of years.

So you can put Intelepeer and iSkoot on the "unlikely" list for the next 12 months. But never say never.

VoIP companies likely for sale

Conversely, anyone who "Never says never" too loudly is worth looking at again. Plunging stock prices, antsy investors (both public and private), and an atmosphere of fear will provide the catalyst for a number of deals - good and bad - in 2009.

(Pieces of) Alcatel-Lucent

With a new leadership team and new organization coming in place on Jan. 1, 2009, Alca-Lu may want to shed and/or spin-out one or more divisions and/or product lines. We're sure Dialogic and GENBAND are looking over what might be applicable and available.

AudioCodes

Publicly-traded AudioCodes could prove to be an attractive buy for any number of hardware companies, due to its core technology, professed love for HD and abundance of fun partnerships. At a market cap of $78 million at the close of business on November 14, the price might be right, followed by some divesture/spin-down of existing assets.

(Pieces of) Nortel

Nortel might need more cash faster, because we don't think the $1 billion asking price for the Metro Ethernet division is going to happen anytime soon. Given they let go of a lot of people in the executive suite earlier this month, existing shareholders are going to press for more rapid and drastic changes to go with the planned job cuts.

New executives might be tempted to chainsaw the company down - especially if there is a new CEO in the first quarter of '09.

SimpleSignal

It's a hosting/SaaS play, it has a lot of good technology and the company continues to generate a steady stream of Fierce ideas, as evidenced by its appearance on the Fierce 15. Could we see them?

Vonage

At close of business on November, 14, Vonage had a market cap of $139 million and change. It almost seems to be begging for someone to come in, buy them up, and put a stake through the heart of its marketing expenses. A larger phone or cable company could conceivably roll them into existing marketing operations. But the buyer would have to be a serious Net Neutrality lover.

However, what would be a reasonable offer for the company when you toss in that $253 million of senior secured debt?

Yahoo

The ever-declining Yahoo does have the whole IM and voice services thing going on. If the stock price continues to drop, both Google and Microsoft are bound to take another look at the company. We also wouldn't be surprised to see a Fierce play by Verizon or another carrier.

Vonage

Doug Mohney — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:13:47 -0500

Founded: 2001

Status: Suffering a death of a thousand cuts

What does it do: Independent VoIP service provider

Website: www.vonage.com

VoIP trivia fans know that Vonage origins have a link to Jeff Pulver's "Min-X.com" voice minutes futures exchange. Pulver apparently sought out Jeff Citron as an investor and, instead, ended up investing in Vonage at the start-up stage when the smoke cleared.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, where do we begin to document the turbulent pot-hole-filled road Vonage has been on? The company's appetite for capital has been ginormous, sucking down $658 million in VC money and private debt before going public. Its IPO raised around $531 million with an offering price of $17 a share, but the company fumbled the way it sold shares to its own customers, resulting in a lawsuit.

Speaking of lawsuits, Vonage has been successfully sued for patent violation by Verizon ($120 million), Sprint ($80 million), and AT&T ($39 million). (Nortel also sued on patent violations, but lost; draw your own conclusions).

In its latest adventures in finance, the company managed to work out a deal to refinance $253 million in debt with Silver Point Finance after four tries. This wasn't enough to get the stock price above a buck, so the NYSE sent over a notice of delisting if the price doesn't come back up within six months.

However, Vonage has yet to escape its three chronic diseases - financial losses quarter after quarter, a churn rate stuck at 3 percent per month, and Captain Insano marketing expenses of $272.24 per subscriber. If a typical customer is paying you $24.99 per month and you have to knock out $10 per month for operational expenses (like providing the service and billing him), that gives you a payback of Way Too Long.

SunRocket

Doug Mohney — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:56:50 -0500

Founded: 2004

Status: July 2007

Cause of Death: Multiple causes, beat down by cable VoIP, tried to grow too fast

What did it do: Low-cost Vonage clone

Founded by a pair of former MCI employees, the VoIP services company raised $80 million in venture capital and had 206,000 customers at its peak. SunRocket's hook was aggressive pricing, as low as $299 per year for unlimited calling to major cities in 41 countries and a domestic U.S. unlimited plan of $199 per year; an initial promo promised two years of service for $199, plus phones (no jelly jars or Ginzu knives, though).

SunRocket ran into severe growing pains early on. The company suffered from extended outages and poor customer service as it continued to grow.

And then it just ran out of cash. One source attributed SunRocket's money crunch to trying to raise a third round of investment funding at the same time as Vonage was trying to get its IPO out the door.

Even if SunRocket had managed to raise another round, it would have only been putting off the inevitable. Cable and POTS players were easily winning the argument of better and more reliable service trumping low-ball cost. And big brother Vonage is still trying to make its business model work.

The Fallen - Crashed and struggling VoIP companies

Doug Mohney — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:20:01 -0500

While I compiled the 2008 VoIP Fierce 15, I looked back at previous Fierce 15 lists. SunRocket was a member of the 2006 VoIP Fierce 15, and this got me thinking about the many companies that have crashed and burned over the past few years -- plus those that seem to chronically struggle.

Numerous companies rushed into the VoIP world with expectations of changing the world. Most showed great potential at first, winning vital acclaim in the media, throngs of admirers and predictions of greatness.

And yet, at some point in time, fortunes change. Acclaim turns to scorn, devotees turn to embittered critics and dreams become crushed by the real-world.

For some, it was a failure of execution. Others held onto their vision for too long, letting it grow stale and stagnate, becoming a me-too player, rather than an innovator.

Still others overreached, tried to be too much too soon, too fast, and burned out. Plus you have a couple with notably shady characters in their past and shaky business models that never made a dime.

Did we leave anyone out?

- Doug

Vonage reports 3Q results, $8M loss

Pete Wylie — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:29:45 -0500

Vonage released its third quarter earnings Thursday, and despite a net gain of more than 9,000 customers in the quarter, it lost $8 million for the quarter, $1 million more than the previous quarter.
With increasing losses and continuing churn issues (3 percent for the quarter), the road to profitability never seems to end for Vonage. Add to the equation the time it took Vonage to find a taker on its debt and a threat of delisting by the NYSE, and it's tough to see how Vonage makes it in the long-run. Bleeding millions of dollars while only adding a few thousand customers a quarter cannot sit well with Vonage stockholders.

CEO Marc Lefar tried to put a good spin on the news, highlighting the net customer gain and the eventual refinancing of the debt.

"As we look forward, we continue to maintain our focus on fixing the business fundamentals," Lefar said. "We are becoming more selective in our product investments, continuing to improve customer care and reevaluating our marketing messaging and media investment. Although we anticipate modest growth for the balance of the year, the changes we are putting in place should position us for accelerated growth in 2009."

But the pressing issues for Lefar and the rest of Vonage's staff are figuring out a way to reduce churn and cutting marketing expense for new customers (it currently spends $272.24 per subscriber added). While adding new customers is necessary, paying too much to do so is a recipe for continued insolvency.

For more:
- see the Vonage press release about 3Q financial situation

NYSE delisting = more bad news for Vonage

Pete Wylie — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:32:48 -0400

Vonage Holdings admitted to more gloomy financial news Thursday, as it reported that the NYSE informed the VoIP company last week its stock was in danger of being de-listed. Vonage must get its share price over $1.00 within six months, or it risks being removed from the premier stock exchange in the world.

In a statement, Vonage said that it "intends to cure the deficiency."

You can bet that the current share price and de-listing notice will be a hot topic at the Vonage Special Stockholders meeting Monday, Nov. 3. The meeting was originally scheduled to discuss Vonage's debt refinancing agreement with SilverPoint Partners, but the board now has this to consider as well.

Vonage had to extend its tender offer four times before some one bit at refinancing the debt, and it has yet to fix issues with churn, or find new subscriber bases. And it was ordered to pay Sprint $80 million for a patent violation just over a year ago.

No doubt Vonage employees are hoping 2009 is a lot better than 2008.

For more:
- see the company's release here

Vonage finally inks refinancing

Pete Wylie — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 13:51:39 -0400

Vonage today announced it will refinance $253 million in convertible debt, pending a shareholder vote on the deal.

Silver Point Finance LLC will fund $202.3 million of the debt in a tiered system, including a first-tier $130.3 million security in senior convertible notes and $72 million second lien credit facility. Silver Point will also purchase $18 million in convertible third-tier notes from Vonage, according to company release.

Vonage plans to purchase the difference of around $33 million with cash on hand. These finalized plans put to rest speculation that Vonage might not find a taker for the refinancing of the debt facility, which was set to mature in 2009. Vonage has struggled in the past few quarters to grow its subscriber base. The company, which floated the tender offer June 30, 2008, announced on Friday that it was extending the offer for the fourth time.

John Rego, Vonage CFO, said in a release,"This agreement provides Vonage with the financial stability to focus on increasing profitability while continuing to provide customers with innovative, feature-rich phone service."

The company's stockholders will vote on the proposed purchase of the debt Nov. 3, 2008, at a special meeting.

For more:
- see the company release here

Vonage having trouble selling its debt

Pete Wylie — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:11:06 -0400

Vonage Holdings announced Thursday that is extending its offer to purchase its convertible debt for a fourth time - not really good news.

Amid the recent credit crunch, Vonage has had no luck getting rid of the $253 million in 5 percent senior unsecured convertible notes, which mature in 2010. The tender offer is valid until Nov. 3, or until Vonage has to extend it again because no one is impressed with their future prospects at the moment.

In a release dated Oct. 7, 2008, John Rego, Vonage Chief Financial Officer, said, "We continue to work diligently to complete the refinancing of our convertible notes and are encouraged by our progress to date. We believe the updated structure we are announcing today will provide the necessary funding to operate our business for the foreseeable future."

Vonage gained subscribers last quarter and reduced churn a bit, but it doesn't look like the funding Rego mentioned is coming from repurchase of the debt in the foreseeable future. So what other options does Vonage have left, besides hoping they can rapidly erase a $7 million operating loss? Could Vonage be one of the first economic downturn casualties in the VoIP space?

For more:
- see the tradingmarkets.com article here
- see the previous Vonage release here

Free World Dialup no Longer 'Free'

Doug Mohney — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:05:28 -0400

Over the weekend, the one million registered users to Free World Dialup (FWD) were told that free is no longer free. After 12 years of free operations, users will be asked to pay $30 per year as of September 1, 2008. The announcement also named Daniel Beringer, as CEO of FWD.

In an email sent out on Friday by FWD founder and VoIP pundit Jeff Pulver, the $30 yearly fee is being justified as a "magic number" that is only "10%" of the cost of Vonage's unlimited usage plan. However, Pulver has disavowed any connections with old style telephony and the PSTN, vowing not to chase per-minute arbitrage for lower-cost long distance calling as Skype, Jajah and others have done. According to the blog post, FWD "will provide no services to facilitate interconnection with the telephone network," which means the company won't support "-In" and "-Out" connection type services to the PSTN. It also won't have to worry about 911 and CALEA obligations.

It will be interesting to see how well FWD's business model will work in practice. In theory, users could pay $30 to be able to connect to a large number of SIP networks for voice, IM, and video calls. But it is only a matter of time before one or more of those networks start asking for interconnection charges since the "Free" has gone from FWD. Vonage has already nixed FWD's free calls on its network.

The blog post also cites Vonage as a successful business model on track to generate nearly "$1 billion," but this reporter isn't sure if that's a good analogy. Vonage is still burdened with significant debt due to high per user marketing costs and its services are also designed as a plug-replacement for PSTN, with the ability to reach any number anywhere, including 911.

For more
- Pulver FWD $30 per year manifesto blog

Related articles:
Beringer has pontificated on Lights Out for Phone Networks
FWD may have The Telco Skype Killer to fear

Vonage posts record revenue, cuts losses

Pete Wylie — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 10:43:08 -0400

Vonage announced record revenue of $228 million for the second quarter of 2008, according to an earnings report released Thursday. The company is still operating at a loss; however, the $7 million loss reported this quarter is down more than 60 percent from the $23 million loss the company reported in the same quarter last year.

The company's average revenue per line increased from $28.85 to $29.04 sequentially, but it only added 2,000 net customers in the quarter, as it continues to battle churn rates of close to 3 percent.

Vonage continues to spend heavily on advertising and marketing, with marketing expenses accounting for 29 percent of total spending. The company boasts 150,000 more subscribers than it did at this point last year, but such slow growth (6 percent) will limit the company's hope for eventual profitability.

For more:
- The Vonage 2Q earnings report is here.

Vonage Names Ex-Cingular Wireless Exec New CEO

Doug Mohney — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:38:52 -0400

As expected, Vonage has announced a new CEO. Marc Lefar, a former Cingular Wireless executive, will take over from Interim/Until-Next-Time CEO Jeffery Citron.

Lefar served as Chief Marketing Officer at Cingular Wireless/AT&T Mobility for more than four years; Vonage notes that AT&T Mobility's customer base more than tripled and subscriber churn declined by near 50 percent during his tenure. After leaving Cingular (and likely waiting out a non-compete clause on a contract), Lefar founded a technology and media consultancy. Before Cingular, Lefar was an Executive VP at Cable & Wireless and held senior leadership positions at Verizon Wireless and GTE Wireless.

Citron will stick around as non-executive Chairman of the Board and serve as a "consultant on long-term strategy."

Conspiracy theorists might note that voice service providers in trouble seem to be reaching for executives from the wireless world and AT&T. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse served as president of AT&T Wireless Services from 1997-2000. Maybe Lefar has a TV commercial in store at Vonage.

For more:
- Vonage new CEO announcement

Related articles
Vonage Near on Refinancing, New CEO
Vonage goes cash positive--churn and debt still problems

VoIP Tech Support Ratings Up

Doug Mohney — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:09:49 -0400

PC Magazine rolls out its 2008 user survey of rating VoIP tech support in America. Everyone except for Skype had improvements.

Cablevision's Optimum Voice gets a Readers' Choice selecting with an 8.6 for ease of setup; users requiring technical support are also down from 18 percent to 14 percent, the lowest score of all the VoIP providers. Vonage also gets a Readers' Choice and higher marks for customer service improvements, coming in at an 8.4 for ease of setup.

Skype gets slagged; dropping from 7.8 to 7.4 for ease of use, but the service has fewer users requiring technical support, with only 2 percent on PC-to-PC calls and 7 percent for PC-to-phone calls. Newcomer to the list magicJack gets good marks from readers for ease of setup and relatively less technical support requirements, but users says the sound quality isn't that great.

Readers should take note to review the summary chart; over 400 Vonage users put in their two cents worth while Comcast users secured second place with 226 customers rating their service.

For more:
- PC Magazine rates VoIP tech support

Related articles:
One third of VoIP users need support
magicJack mystique

SPOTLIGHT: VoIP 1Q08 Subscriber Numbers

Doug Mohney — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:33:32 -0400

ISP-Planet has compiled the top 10 VoIP subscriber numbers in the United States by companies reporting their first quarter 2008 numbers.

Comcast is on top with 5.2 million subscribers, followed by Time Warner with 3.2 million subs and Vonage in third with 2.6 million subscribers. Cox (2.5M) and CableVision (1.7) million round out the top five. Add them up and the top 10 providers serve nearly 18 million customers in the U.S., and that's not even throwing in Covad (Went private, not announcing numbers), AT&T, Packet8, and a number of other players.

For more:
- ISP-Planet.com Top 10 VoIP providers

Related articles:
IP Telephony Sales Down, VoIP VARs Still Up
Twenty percent annual growth for VoIP

Vonage Launches Pro

Doug Mohney — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:22:26 -0400

Vonage has launched Vonage Pro, a bundle of five components designed for the "on the go" VoIP user.

The Vonage Pro package includes a softphone client provided by CounterPath, Vonage Companion, to enable a desktop or laptop PC to simultaneously ring a home phone and the softphone. Other features of Companion include being able to make outbound calls on both home phone and soft phone at the same time, selective customer block, conference calling, personalized ring tones and call recording.

Other parts of the Vonage Pro bundle include unlimited residential voice service, 25 visual voice mail messages per month along with 25 411 directory assistance calls per moth and integration of Vonage Contact Center. Visual voicemail automatically transcribes voicemails to email or SMS text while contact center provides the ability to sync all contacts from different address books along with voice activated dialing and speed dial.

Cost of the Vonage Pro bundle for new customers will be $34.99 per month (plus tax and fees) with a first month thrown in free; existing Residential Premium Unlimited customers can add Vonage Pro for an additional $10 per month.

For more:
- Vonage Pro announcement

Related articles:
Vonage Near on Refinancing, New CEO
Vonage Spins Happy, But New Customer Subs Decline

Cable Raids Independent VoIP Companies, Telcos

Doug Mohney — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 19:41:40 -0400

The flurry of news over Vonage getting a new CEO and new financing to stave off a potential bankruptcy doesn't overshadow the fact cable companies are cleaning up in the VoIP arena.

DSLreports notes that subscriber growth over the past year ending in the first quarter of 2008 has been less than 200,000 for independent VoIP providers; that's less than one-fifth of the new subs from the previous year. Compare that to cable companies 5.5 million subs picked up in the last year; Time Warner added 285,000 phone subs in 1Q08 alone, and it trailed Comcast's 711,000 subs in the same time period.

Cable companies are also picking up plenty of subs from traditional phone companies, as they leverage their triple-play offerings to snap up voice services from consumers. Cable's growth is in part leading AT&T, Verizon, Qwest and Embarq to a collective loss of 2.6 million landline customers per quarter (along with a good helping from wireless services).

For more:
- DSLreports discusses how cable companies are beating independent VoIP providers

Related articles:
SPOTLIGHT: Mobile and VoIP Doom Wireline in Oz
VoIP, Cellular bite U.S. fixed-lines hard

Vonage Near on Refinancing, New CEO

Doug Mohney — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:39:53 -0400

Vonage has announced a deal for up to $215 million in financing from hedge fund Silver Point Finance and should name a new CEO next week.

Proceeds from the deal, along with its own cash, are expected to be used to repurchase the remainder of $253 million in convertible notes it has floating around and was due in December. Auditors had questioned Vonage's ability to pay the notes and keep the business in operation.

The refinance deal is subject to some other terms, including finding other lenders to come up with $60 million of the debt financing.

In addition, current "interim" CEO Jeffrey Citron will step to the side next week with a new CEO to be announced. Details on a succession plan have not been announced, but the new CEO would be responsible for managing Vonage's day-to-day operation while Citron will "remain involved" with the company.

The Wall Street Journal points out Vonage is by no means out of the woods yet. The company faces increasing competition from cable operators and even wireless carriers, as customers disconnect wireline phones to rely on their mobile phones as their primary means of voice service.

For more:
- Wall Street Journal reports on Vonage new financing, CEO

Related articles:
Vonage goes cash positive--churn and debt still problems
Vonage Spins Happy, But New Customer Subs Decline

FORD: Is VoIP a Success?

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:37:08 -0400

By Carl Ford

I shared with some friends the perspective that I have that VoIP is a success. After all, circuit switching is experiencing "end of life" management by network operators everywhere. However, as a service, VoIP has not really delivered a crushing blow. In the regulatory world, VoIP is part of the existing telecom portfolio. No one includes the innovation that comes to VoIP rightfully from its Computer Telephone Integration history when looking at the technology. Adjunct integrations that use Voice/Web 2.0 technology to deliver dual mode services or provide virtualization to geographic numbers are outside the scope of most discussions about VoIP.

So can VoIP be considered a success?

Brough Turner of NMS Communications pointed out to me three areas of opportunity for real change that VoIP should be part of in the network. The first is going beyond "Digital POTS." Many service providers have embraced VoIP for the cost savings of integrating to their IP infrastructure to do nothing more than replicate the PSTN. Cable operators, Vonage and others have built to match what exists--not what could be. Skype has been the best at demonstrating the potential for VoIP and has many interesting adjunct developments with click to dial, conferencing and Internet devices that morph what exists to create what should be.

A second place where VoIP is not living up to its potential is in the world of enterprise PBXs. While Microsoft is pushing for Unified Communication, the majority of the marketplace is still in a walled garden mindset where the IP-PBX vendor you buy from bundles proprietary handsets and has a closed ecosystem of approved devices. Bill Miller of Digium would remind me that Asterisk is another community where through open source the ability to connect to a variety of devices is possible.

Finally, comes the biggest opportunity. Wireless is running to embrace the Internet with broadband services, but using primarily its existing framework. University of Minnesota's Dr. Andrew Odlysko points out that IP has won as the connecting glue because of its flexibility, adaptability to legacy networks and third party development. However, the adaptability to the legacy network is tilted toward the existing infrastructure of the wireless architecture.

It's logical to project that wireless is a market imperative for consumers of the Internet. The data points for this conclusion are the iPhone owners being responsible for over 80 percent of the data browsing on mobile phones and Scandinavia's wideband HSPA services being used to connect laptops.

Just like the Internet usurped the PSTN to have ubiquity and then flipped voice traffic to the point where now almost all long distance calls are on top of the Internet, we can make the case that wireless is going to have the same experience. With ecosystems being built by companies like EBay/Skype, Apple and Google are building ecosystems of developers looking to deliver something more nomadic digital POTS.

We should see VoIP as part of the mix with better integration of presence and positioning information in a signaling structure beyond SS7. Whether VoIP is thought of as a service or a function in a service should be irrelevant. VoIP's future success is everywhere.

Carl Ford is Strategic Advisor and Community Developer for FierceMarkets. His words of wisdom can be found at www.carlford.net.

Comcast-Vonage Deal Generates Critics

Doug Mohney — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:59:51 -0400

Some days you can't win. Comcast's announcement of an agreement with Vonage to address "reasonable network management" of VoIP is raising eyebrows and criticism.

Wednesday's announcement of the two companies working together has called into question Comcast's network management practices, says Information Week. Free Press, a non-profit organization working to reform the media, is wondering why Vonage needs to cut a deal with Comcast to guarantee that its services are not degraded or blocked. The organization wants to know if Comcast has degraded Vonage services in the past and if they continue to degrade other services from competitors.

Comcast says they've only affected peer-to-peer applications, a stance which has the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) not happy and prepared to issue an order for the cable company to stop blocking any applications, disclose its network management practices, and submit a timetable on when and how the cable operator aims to comply with the order.

Needless to say if the order comes to pass, Comcast is likely to go to court on the matter. Or the company may simply stall for time and see what a new administration might bring to Washington.

For more:
- Vonage working with Comcast release
- Information Week opines on Vonage Comcast deal

Related articles:
No Comcast 'do-over,' says Martin
Comcast reports 'Comcastic' quarter

MagicJack mystique

Doug Mohney — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 12:36:46 -0400

Unlimited long distance for $19.95 a year? It sounds more like a Ron Popeil commercial than a business plan.

The magicJack device costs $40 for the first year and includes a year of unlimited long distance calls anywhere in the United States. Plug one end of the over-sized thumb-drive device into a USB port, plug a phone into the other end of the device, dial away. The startup has sold more than 400,000 devices six months after launch and is now selling them at a clip of 7,000 per day, adding twice as many new accounts over the period as Vonage.

According to a variety of media pundits, the magicJack gizmo is easy to install and delivers consistently good sound quality on phone calls. Is it a threat to phone companies? You can't bundle TV and broadband with it. And consumer VoIP has been notoriously difficult to make profitable (See Vonage, SunRocket).

However, magicJack isn't perfect. There have been problems with delivering quality tones to menu-driven services and quality of service over cell phone broadband. Customer service--the Achilles heel of many businesses today--is only available through online chats. And you only can make and receive phone calls as long as your computer is on, so media pundits seem to be mixing and matching magicJack's functionality and convenience between Skype and Vonage.

Making money will be done through selling ads, displayed as a part of the software client that runs as magicJack is operational. The company also reserves the right to monitor the numbers dialed to in order to tailor ads, so users are going to give up some privacy in the process.

For more:
- U.S. News and World Reports gushes praise on magicJack

Related articles:
SPOTLIGHT: MagicJack voice-via-USB gains steam
Telecom's voice is changing

CONTACT CENTER CORNER: Vonage Deploys Five9 Virtual Call Center

Doug Mohney — Wed, 21 May 2008 22:47:47 -0400

Vonage has deployed Five9's Virtual Call Center in several divisions to manage its marketing campaigns.

Vonage needed a quick, easy-to-use and manage call center system; Five9 provided implementation services and training to get departments operational in four days. Features swaying the decision to go with Five9 included predictive dialing and outbound solutions. Several campaigns already executed have produced winbacks and generated revenue; Five9 is also being used for customer satisfaction polling.

A virtual call center solution is something Vonage would appreciate since it gives the company the ability to quickly scale up and down resources for outbound calling, rather than having to purchase, implement and maintain a dedicated call center solution. Using Five9's hosted solution gives Vonage the option to quickly scale back if they need to do more belt tightening.

For more:
- Five9 touts Vonage as a customer

Related articles:
USCB Embraces Five9 Call Center Solution
Vonage lowers loss, will sell DSL via Covad