Vonage may be going public, but it's receiving a considerable amount of public scrutiny surrounding the stability of its Internet telephony business. Even though Vonage is able to sell phone service
on the Web at affordable prices, competition from cable, telecom and other voice over Internet Protocol providers like Skype leave it exposed, say skeptics. For one thing, the triple-play deal of
phone, high-speed Internet and digital TV offered by the likes of Time Warner and Comcast is hard to pass up for many consumers. Then there's Skype, which offers free PC to PC phones calls as well as
free PC to land lines calls in the U.S. and Canada as part of a promotion. Despite cornering 31 percent of the Internet phone market, one telecom analyst declares that "Vonage won't be the company
people are going to identify with voice-over-Internet phones six months from now." Most of the problem is that Vonage offers a single product that's not even the best deal in its field, and it's
competing with firms that offer multiple services for a single price. Call it the TiVo of VoIP.
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