The Only Question: Who Buys Vonage?

Pundits used to kick around the idea of "who will buy Vonage?". We are going to find out. With the noise around patent infringement no help, the stock price has dropped to the $3 level. So Vonage's life as an independent company is drawing to a close. Now, to be sure, Vonage executives probably always assumed they would be acquired, someday. That it would be such a "distress" sale probably wasn't comtemplated, at least not initially. No cable company is going to touch it, so that leaves telecom segment players as the only conceivable "network service" buyers. It isn't so clear what value Vonage might represent to application providers. I haven't done the math yet, but at $3 a share, buying the company probably gets close to "customer acquisition cost" for at least some potential buyers with a srategic need for wireline VoIP customer base and associated platform elements. In any event, we are going to find out.

HDTV Bandwidth Planning

One of the thorniest questions faced by all access providers is how much bandwidth will be required to support high definition and other forms of TV. Operationally, the discussion tends to turn on how many simultaneous HDTV streams might be required. The thinking in some quarters is that only a single HDTV stream and one or two standard definition streams will have to be supported concurrently.

SureWest Communications is planning to support multistream high definition DVRs and that will require additional bandwidth, says Bill DeMuth, SureWest Communications CTO. "We are already experiencing about 1.5 HD TVs per home so that is two streams, and if you want to watch one and record two streams it can easily lead to three to four streams of HD being delivered at the same time.

EarthLink Introduces Wi-Fi Phone

And it's attractive in the way an iPod is. No mistake, no doubt. About what one would expect from a company that has consumer marketing in its genes.

The phone is manufactured by Accton Technology Corporation and currently is in beta use at the company’s municipal wireless network in Anaheim, Calif.

EarthLink has no illusions about the difficulty of moving its business model forward, after beginning life as a dial-up Internet access provider. Still, it has a better shot than most who began business life that way, and already has done better than many would-be VoIP providers.

It always will be tough to compete with the cable and telephone companies, so you have to appreciate EarthLink's grittiness, toughness and marketing savvy. As they say, "thumbs up" for the phone design.

PhoneGnome Adds Gtalk, MSN, Yahoo!

The PhoneGnome free calling community now includes GoogleTalk (Gtalk), MSN Messenger, and Yahoo! users. PhoneGnome users can now also place free VoIP calls to users on GoogleTalk (Gtalk), MSN Messenger, and Yahoo!

These destinations can be entered in the ‘Quick Call’ box or added to a users' on-line Contacts and called with click-to-dial or by dialing the assigned speed dial code directly on your phone (for PhoneGnome box owners).

The PhoneGnome free calling community now includes:
* All PhoneGnome members, whether web-only, PC, or box, all over the world
* SIPphone/Gizmo Project
* Free World Dialup
* EarthLink MindSpring (formerly Vling)
* Hundreds of additional VoIP services reachable via SIPbroker
* Any SIP user, anywhere in the world (including Asterisk PBXes
* Millions of numbers reachable free through our private peering relationships
* ISN/ITAD numbers (freenum.org)
* GoogleTalk (Gtalk)
* MSN/Live Messenger
* Yahoo! Messenger
* PhoneGnome box users can even use a regular phone as a Skype phone.

"Each day, we get one step closer to pure Internet free calls to everyone," says David Beckemeyer, Televolution CEO.

Application Optimized Phones

Danger. BlackBerry, iPhone. Someday soon, Google phone. Just a few illustrations of the development of application optimized phones. Not application specific, as they are multiple function devices. Rather, optimized for a particular set of functions, with voice as a lowest common denominator

"Some of the time the engineers are dedicated to developing a mobile phone," Google executive Isabel Aguilera is quoted as saying on the Spanish-news Web site Noticias.com.

Simeon Simeonov, Polaris Venture Partners partner, has been told the Google Phone will be a BlackBerry-like device running C++ at the core with an operating system bootstrap, or loading program, and optimized Java, and that it would offer VoIP.

Rumors also link Google and Samsung as partners developing a phone, code-named "Switch." Google and Samsung announced a partnership in January to bundle mobile versions of Google Search, Google Maps and Gmail on certain Samsung phones.

Google has on its payroll Andy Rubin, the founder of handheld device maker Danger who later started Android, a mobile-software maker that Google bought in 2005. Google also acquired mobile-applications company Reqwireless and secretly acquired a company called Skia, whose first product is a portable graphics engine that renders 2D graphics on handhelds.

Verizon Dangles Bait. Will Fish Bite?

Verizon is dangling financial bait in front of returning or new customers. Consumers who have chosen to use cable phones, computer phones or wireless phones for their primary lines can now add the reliability and security of a Verizon landline to their household for $9.99 a month for a year. Win back programs are a staple of the competitive communications business, so the mere fact of a win back offer isn't surprising. Even the promotional price, though quite promotional, is unheard of.

The key element here is that Verizon is signaling that it has had enough of competitor poaching, and is prepared to halt the erosion, even at the price of destroying its POTS line margins. The prize now is shifting to lines in service. Broadband may be foundational, but a customer relationship is key to upselling other services. If that is POTS, so be it. The worse thing at this point is stranded assets, not margin off a POTS line, necessarily.

Google, TV Spectrum Auction, GooglePhone

I will say in advance that this is merely a speculation, but look at some of the possible events headed our way, along with a rumor gaining more credence. The rumor is that Google has 100 people working on some sort of Google phone. Then there is the matter of what happens in 2009 when the analog TV broadcast system is shut down, and a block of really valuable spectrum, at frequencies that penetrate walls quite nicely, are available for some other use.

Google is among companies that "really doesn't want to be a communications service provider," and there are good reasons for that being its actual position. But things change. What if wireless service providers "pull a Viacom" and play hardball on approving use of the Google phone, much less actively pushing it. What if Google finds it has no really good choices for ramping up its presence in mobile search, presence and location?

There's all that truly wonderful spectrum being vacated by the TV broadcasters. They will fight to keep it, of course. They'll talk about how they can compete with cable and telcos and satellite broadcasters by switching to digital TV in the same spectrum. Just as obviously, other economic interests who would be in a position to gain from rights to use that spectrum will actively oppose any such notion.

But that's precisely where Google's rumored phone, along with its business need to move into mobile search, location and presence, might prompt a change of thinking about being a communications service provider. Of course, it also will consider partnering with others who really like running networks, to reduce its investment profile.

But there's the speculation. There might be times when application providers, despite their desire to avoid being in the networks business, simply can't get their primary mission accomplished without moving in that direction. Google has been dabbling in Wi-Fi access networks and investing heavily in data centers and backbone transmission. It might not be Google's first choice, but all that juicy spectrum is going to affect the thinking of all sorts of players out there, across the communications, media and electronics industries.

In Google's case, the value of owning spectrum and a network, along or with friendly others, is the opportunity to dramatically propel user dwell time with Google Docs & Spreadsheets, search, maps, Gmail and GoogleTalk. And since a mobile phone that doesn't connect to the public network isn't quite so useful, it will do that as well.