Comments on: Vonage settles patent case with Sprint

Internet telephony provider agrees to pay Sprint Nextel a total of $80 million to use its voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, patents.

[MarkR445]

Pity

Pity that this debacle is giving the entire VoIP segment a black eye because there are great companies out there that focused on the technology and not the ?sizzle?. Hey, I liked the Vonage commercials as much as the next guy, I only wish they had spent more time and money making sure they had the rights to use the technology they did. I still like the idea of VoIP and finding alternatives is hard because I don?t want to be stranded like many Sunrocket customers were recently. It seems there are good alternatives like Net2Phone and Lingo, but it is really too bad that such a high profile provider will probably set this whole category back in people?s minds.

[nicmart]

AT&T?

I use CallVantage, AT&T's VoIp service. I wonder if they licensed the
patents, worked around them, or are waiting to be clobbered.

[mikeburek]

free market innovation

It's great to see the innovation that Sprint and Verizon had. They were way ahead and already developed patents, but they didn't have any competition so they didn't release anything new. They just wanted to keep charging people lots of money, while hold the IP rights to something that would help customers. That's is a monopolistic approach by Sprint and Verizon - making the barrier to market entry by another very very hard.

[skrubol]

Readylink

Sprint's Readylink (Walkie Talkie) service uses VOIP. I believe Verizon has something similar.