Patrick Barnard
Group Managing Editor, TMCnet

October 2007

You are browsing the archive for October 2007.

Vonage Settles With Sprint

In case you haven’t heard the news, Vonage has settled its patent suit with Sprint, and will pay the telco about $80 million in a cash settlement. As per the agreement, Vonage will pay $35 million for past use, $40 million for a license going forward, and $5 million in prepayment "for services." In addition the two companies announced that they are about to enter into an unspecified business relationship. A federal jury ruled last month that Vonage had infringed patents belonging to Sprint and ordered the company to pay $69.5 million in damages, plus future royalties. Vonage said it would appeal, but instead ended up settling. Meanwhile, Vonage is still hoping for a favorable verdict in the patent infringement case brought against it by Verizon last year. Last month a U.S. appeals court upheld a verdict that Vonage had infringed on patents held by Verizon.

VoIP Inc. Reports Record Increase in Network Usage

Hey, we all knew it was coming -- VoIP’s explosive growth, that is. Considering that the major telecommunications carriers in the U.S. have been using VoIP on their long haul networks for nearly two decades now, it only makes sense that eventually it would find its application on the last mile networks of today’s fixed line and mobile broadband service providers. It’s all part of the ongoing evolutionary process in communications technology: Find a better way to do something and eventually everyone will want to use that method. Consumer awareness of VoIP is growing rapidly, as people come to discover the many advantages it holds over traditional phone service (not the least of which is its super low cost – typically either free for local calls or pennies per minute for long distance).