Vonage, Safe for Now, Needs Your Help

Har dee har har

It is rare for us to be nice to astroturfing efforts by major corporations, but as a happy Vonage user for a number of years, I’ll bite. Vonage was just granted a stay just as things looked bleak and can stay in business.The company, needless to say, is angry. They’re expressing that anger through a new site, FreeToCompete, which they’re using as a first step in their “long-term patent reform campaign.”

The site is your standard petition-ware with some testimonials and facts. I doubt the groundswell of popular opinion will turn this case either way, but as we all know, stranger things have happened. What is the real take-away, here? That the “soviet ministries” are ruining competition. The big guys run the bandwidth, the spectrum, and the hardware and they want no one — not even little old Vonage — to take the cash cow that is national and international communications. The old boys have far too much invested in infrastructure and research to allow anything to scrape a few pennies off of their already impressive bottom line.

So good luck, Vonage. We hate on you sometimes, but it’s only because you, like TiVo, are two of the shining lights in U.S. innovation and both of you have disappointed us in the past few months with slow technological uptake and lots of news of rats jumping a sinking ship. Clearly, this is now not the case, but when idols falter, everyone is effected.