Vonage VoIP Forum Digest

July 7, 2008

By Daniel Connor

Welcome to the Vonage VoIP Forum Digest

In the Forums
What poster asks, "What does *99 do?" Great question! The answer is that *99 sets the bandwidth saver to High with some adapters. Brian188 adds, "any Linksys adapter *99 places the adapter in Modem Pass through mode. Similar to fax pass through. Essentially it turns off Echo cancel, call waiting, silence suppression, and DTMF transfer. To use the highest bandwidth setting you either need to have it set that way in the Vonage control panel or dial *017110 from your phone. There is no charge for either the bandwidth settings, or the modem pass through."

Another interesting thread asks whether Vonage will work if he moves to Mexico. The short answer is it "should" work, but it really depends on the ISP and bandwidth. Fortunately, Mexico doesn't seem to be blocking Vonage outright, unlike South Korea which according to Tom Keating's post today, now seems to be stalling number portability for VoIP providers, in addition to blocking Vonage outright. Guess it's a good thing he's going South of the Border and not to South Korea!

In the News
According to PR-inside.com, Vonage UK today has appointed the database management company Information Arts, a B2B marketing specialist to manage, design and lead its UK SME & SOHO customer insight strategy. Information Arts helps develop lead generation, customer development and dealer channel programmes using their targeted UK SME insight data.

According to the news release, Vincent Potier, Vonage's newly appointed Managing Director said, "The SOHO and SME markets are an integral part of our business and commercial strategy. These business sectors are often neglected - unfairly getting overlooked and lost in no man's land between home users and bigger corporates. Vonage is the ideal service to bridge that gap and we fully recognise the importance of this sector. With their strong reputation in the telecoms sector for B2B insight data, Information Arts is our ideal partner to enhance our communications with these businesses."

I think it's interesting that Vonage UK is targeting the SME business arena while in the U.S. Vonage for the most part has been focused on residential. It'll be interesting to see how well Vonage UK does in the business arena and if that business model comes to the U.S.

Vonage Stock Report
Today, Vonage is currently trading at $1.66 (+$0.01) and closed before the 4th of July (Friday) at $1.65 or 1 cent higher from Wednesday's close.

Vonage VoIP Forum Digest - July 7, 2008