Thursday, March 8, 2007

Vonage/Verizon, Part 2 - Innovative Alternatives Exist

After my earlier post went up about today's Vonage/Verizon news, I got a note from Moshe Maeir, who has been cited here a fair bit recently.

He's wearing all the hats these days getting his startup Flat Planet Phone Company off the ground. Well, today's news could turn out to be his lucky break. He's coming to market at an interesting time, and he points out in this afternoon's blog post that the Verizon win today could really hurt innovation for VoIP. I couldn't agree more, and I think that's a genuine concern right now for anybody who wants to see this space thrive.

Have a look - he's basically saying that his company's platform can allow anyone to be a phone company - of sorts - for only $199. It's a pretty interesting proposition, and opens up very wide possibilities for innovative services. Maybe not landline replacement, but enough variations to keep this market moving forward - despite what appears to be Verizon's best efforts to the contrary.

Verizon may win the battle today - although that still remains to be seen - and to be fair, there may well be a legitimate basis to their charges (and if so, justice has been served)- but I don't think they'll win the war. Vonage or no Vonage, the VoIP genie is out of the bottle, and someone, someway is going to make this work.


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