That’s gonna leave a mark. Apparently Vonage infringed upon six of Sprint Nextel’s patents, which is a big, expensive no-no. Sprint will receive $69.5 million plus 5 percent of Vonage’s future revenue.
Earlier this year, Vonage lost a cool $58 million, plus 5.5% future royalties to Verizon. That now seems somewhat tame. All told, that brings the grand total to $127.5 million plus 10.5% of all future revenue that Vonage is going to have to dish out. Guess who might be picking up some or all of that bill? Vonage customers.
I would like to try to say this as delicately as possible. I understand that many of you out there use Vonage and are happy with the service. I understand that Vonage is a better deal than a traditional phone line and that there are many fine people who work for Vonage.
That being said, I don’t like Vonage one bit. I won’t shed a single tear because of this recent lawsuit. As a former customer, I had a terrible time with its customer service and it took me about a dozen phone calls to cancel my account. I was finally able to do so by telling them that I was moving to Australia to study aboriginal people and would be out in the middle of nowhere with no access to any sort of broadband internet service. I’m not kidding, either.