A dark day has come for the world of VoIP now that Vonage has admitted it has no technical workaround for the patents held by Verizon. This is huge. The patents Verizon nailed Vonage on are: patent “6,282,574,” related to the way Vonage connects to the PSTN (the public switched telephone network), patent “6,104,711,” related to Caller ID and Call Waiting, and patent “6,359,880,” related to wireless calls.
These patents speak to the very heart of Vonage’s business. Worse yet, these patents may affect the future of scores of smaller VoIP companies yet to be served with patent infringement notices from Verizon. If you’ve been eyeballing a switch to Skype’s peer-to-peer telephony offerings, now might be the time to start shopping.
