IP Democracy: CallVantage Praised, Vonage Shredded

Thanks to Andy Abramson, I just read back-to-back two articles about leading VoIP companies, and the contrast between the two struck me as yet another sign that the VoIP market is growing increasingly differentiated as time goes on. It’s not enough any more to simply offer cheaper voice service with a few bells and whistles throw in. Promises count, customer service counts and quality counts.

The first piece, a review of CallVantage by Olga Kharif at Business Week, is a glowing assessment of the AT&T service. Her bottom-line:

All of CallVantage’s basic features were spot on. You can listen to your voice-mail messages on the CallVantage Web site, through your media player. You can also get e-mail notifications whenever someone leaves a voice message on your CallVantage phone. You can even listen to the message when it’s sent as an attachment. That means you don’t have to mope around by the phone waiting for an important call. Instead, you can wait by your computer. I’ve tried to have relationships with a bunch of VoIP services. Some of them were good-looking, but didn’t keep their promises. Others were too geeky for me. But when the time came for me to return the AT&T adapter, it broke my heart — something phones have been doing for lovers ever since they were invented.

But Tom Keating over at TMC.net didn’t write a valentine to Vonage. First, Keating is steamed that Vonage has been promising a Viseon videophone for almost two years, but so far has failed to produce it. Secondly, a Vonage softphone requires an extra payment and an extra phone number. Ditto with Vonage’s new Wi-Fi phone. Keating writes:

Vonage is becoming more and more like a phone company every day. Why can’t I just buy the WiFi phone, or another third-party Wi-Fi phone and install the softphone config info into the phone without paying another fee and having yet another phone number? Are you telling me if I want my Vonage home line using an ATA, a WiFi phone, a Viseon videophone, and the softphone, I need 4 separate numbers with separate account fees for each? Sheesh!

My favorite line from Keating though:

It’s crap like this that will drive users to switch to “pay as you go” pre-paid VoIP.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on December 28, 2005 10:44 AM to IP Democracy