Vonage: the cost it is paying for using proprietary gear

Vonage bashing continues. Nortel is the latest one to join the bashing bandwagon. The vendor has filed a lawsuit against Vonage for patent infringement. This is a great case study for the future aspiring service providers looking to do serious business in telecommunications. The moral is simple: if you develop your own solutions, you can only last as long as you are small. Extension of the moral: once you get big (and you are still using in-house solutions), get ready for the IPR headaches.

I have written twice before (here and here) on Vonage’s proprietary VoIP gear and why it decided to stick to it. The fact is that Vonage is not enabling fantastically different applications and features than what most off-the-shelf access server products in VoIP market are offering. These off-the-shelf access server solutions can be sourced from any of the third party vendors such as Sylantro, Broadsoft, Sonus, Metaswitch, Italtel, Comverse, etc …. Not to mention bigger vendors like NSN, Nortel, Alcatel-Lucent, and Huawei.

Vonage does not have much cash in the bank left after previous settlements along similar infringements with Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint. The company would be better advised to spend that cash on buying off the shelf VoIP gear and get rid of the lawsuit train.