Skibare rants like crazy  (Sunday July 31st Raving on VoIP---Random Thoughts ) page and Andy Abramson seems to agree this is a great post. There is a great deal of truth in the statements made within this post such as:

First, VOIP has not made anyone a dime if they invested in VOIP..........the gateway suppliers, the Network providers, the Optical Cienna's or the Bankrupt Suria Ghouls Network providers trying to KILL EACH other day to day with pricing wars for Bits and Bytes of Data Transport! Sonus, Cienna, Tellabs, ADCT, Carrier Access, Level3, Broadwing, Global Crossing, ATT, the list goes on and on and on and on..........

The definite exceptions here are systems integrators who are selling to enterprises, SMBs and service providers in massive numbers. Think EDS on down. Furthermore as a whole there is a massive amount of spending being done in the VoIP equipment market. There are lots of competitors though. Many softswitch companies, gateway companies, session border controllers, etc. maybe too many.

The money is there for sure, the question is who can make profit in the future.

If Google buys Skype as you suggest it will be an amazing change in the market and Vonage will have a much more serious competitive threat but that doesn’t mean Vonage will go away.

The enormous amount of money being spent by Vonage on marketing is brilliant as they are now the largest VoIP service provider today. Net2phone had a massive head start and didn’t spend the money on marketing and you might argue were a bit too early. The result is that Net2phone has a fraction of the brand recognition that Vonage does. In the consumer space marketing is everything and Vonage has shown they can out market every other service provider. Not just by spending more but by having compelling marketing messages and great branding.

You make some good points. I hope the future is brighter than you suggest.