Vonage going IPO

Diashto writes "I just recieved voicemail on my Vonage phone saying that Vonage is going IPO, and that certain customers may be eligible to purchase common stock at IPO pricing. More information is is available on their IPO site."

they need to.

To raise money for the new "SO you want to actually GET THROUGH to customers on our cablemodems" tariff which is upcoming.

I just received email...

about my long lost uncle who used to work for the oil companies in central Africa. He apparently left me $5 million and all I need to do is contact his Nigerian legal representation.

I received...

... an email about the voice mail. It's either legit or the 409ers managed to get my email address

• and

phone number. Regardless, I think this is better than most IPOs who only offer to the elite brokerage houses, and better than Google where it was anyone's game. Offer to those who have a history of support.

Sounds great ... but.

I'm a Vonage customer since 2004 and I received the IPO e-mail a few days ago. If you're in the same boat I highly recommend reading their risk prospectus first. They will be posting losses for the foreseeable future.

Not a deal-breaker but just a heads up.

Re:Sounds great ... but.

I'm out of mod points, so I'd like to reiterate that I looked into this, and I'm not going to touch it with a 10-foor pole. They spend almost every dollar in revenue they make on marketing, and borrow money to keep their business running. IIRC ( I don't have the prospectus in front of me), but they made $250 mil last year and spent close to $400 mil. When you combine their assets and their debts together, the company is worth less than zero. But this IPO will raise something like $400 mil, and since they're offering about 20% of their outstanding stock they're effectively valuing the company at $2 billion. It's not 1999, folks. It might be possible to buy in at the IPO price, and then flip it for a gain that day. But I like my odds in Vegas better. If you like the long-term prospects, wait a little while and I htink the price will dip below the IPO price....

Common misconceptions

I got the offer from Vonage, too, and I'm debating it. I haven't done the research on it yet. However, it's a common misconception that companies that are experiencing explosive growth should be rolling in the cash. Rapid growth is actually quite expensive, because the company is having to dramatically increase its size in order to keep pace.

Secondly, debt is not necessarily a bad thing for businesses; in fact, it's a positive. I won't go into all the details, but suffice to say that it increases the earning power of the money supplied by the shareholders.

Third, debt is a much cheaper form of financing than equity offerings. It's only natural to expect Vonage to use as much debt as is available to them before they launch an IPO. Think of this, also -- with an IPO, the current Vonage stakeholders are giving up a lot of control over their company. So really, the fact that they are conducting an IPO should really raise more questions than the fact that they have a lot of debt.

Aside from the debt...

The Prospectus and Risk Factors have some interesting tidbits:

1. Their CEO (and top officers) have 6 digit salaries with bonuses that are larger than the actual salary

2. In order to succeed (in their words) Vonage will need consumers to move away from traditional phone lines in favor of Vonage. [Without E911, this is be VERY difficult indeed - and the telcos are not likely to willingly give up their business by giving Vonage access to their E911 systems...even if the FCC says they have to.]

3. In order to succeed (in their words) Vonage needs their competitors to *not* come up with products as good as or better than Vonage's own product. [While this seems intuitive, just think how long it will be - if digital phone takes off (#2 above) - before the cable companies offer equivalent or better offerings with guaranteed QoS for their digital phone service]

I also am not going to take this offer for two reasons:

1. I have to buy at least $100 shares which is more than I can afford at the moment, and
2. I think the price will go down after the first day or two.

Re:Sounds great ... but.

Posted anonymously: I do want my service (such as it is) to continue unimpeded.

wow, that's either genuinely paranoid or really self-centered. You think they will read slashdot, correlate your slashdot account to your real name or vonage account name, look up your account, then cut your service?

Sorry dude, but none of us are that important.

Otherside of the coin

ZDNet blog on why the email/phone pitch is a wrong strategy: http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=1086 [zdnet.com]

Missing steps 4-7

Went through the whole process, as instructed on their web site, but step "4" is missing ...

I sense...

...a great distrubance in The Force.

IPO = more reliability/quality?

I have accounts with 2 VOIP providers on 2 different ISPs and still have reliability issues. When everything is working correctly it's *great*, but when there are problems it's very bad. I hope that the extra money from the IPO helps them improve reliability and call quality and not just "enhance shareholder value" (not that there's anything wrong with that!).

An IPO as new customer lure?

Part of me can't help but wonder if this isn't a way to try and draw in customers, people who see it as a way of getting in on their IPO. I'm a current customer, and I'm considering putting a few ducats into it.

Vonage IPO Questions?

Hope this helps

Contact Questions [vonageipo.com]
You may wish to speak with an independent financial or tax advisor before making any decision to purchase Vonage common stock. Neither Vonage nor any of the underwriters are recommending that you purchase Vonage common stock in this program, and they cannot advise you on whether or not to make such an investment.

Contact Us
Technical Customer Care
Phone: [phone]
Hours: Open 7 days a week from 8:00 am EST to 8:00 pm EST

Legit or not?

Vonage is indeed doing an IPO and they announced [vonage-forum.com] a few days ago that US customers are eligible to buy in. However, the site linked [vonageipo.com] in this story looks like a phishing scam.

Would you buy stock from this man?

From the prospectus:

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1272830/000 104746906006601/a2169686zs-1a.htm [sec.gov]

The past background of our founder, Chairman and Chief Strategist, Jeffrey A. Citron, may adversely affect our ability to enter into business relationships and may have other adverse effects on our business.

Prior to joining Vonage, Mr. Citron was associated with Datek Securities Corporation and Datek Online Holdings Corp., including as an employee of, and consultant for, Datek Securities and, later, as one of the principal executive officers and largest stockholders of Datek Online. Datek Online, which was formed in early 1998 following a reorganization of the Datek business, was a large online brokerage firm. Datek Securities was a registered broker-dealer that engaged in a number of businesses, including proprietary trading and order execution services. During a portion of the time Mr. Citron was associated with Datek Securities, the SEC alleged that Datek Securities, Mr. Citron and other individuals participated in an extensive fraudulent scheme involving improper use of the Nasdaq Stock Market's Small Order Execution System, or SOES. Datek Securities (through its successor iCapital Markets LLC), Mr. Citron and other individuals entered into settlements with the SEC in 2002 and 2003, which resulted in extensive fines, bans from future association with securities brokers or dealers and enjoinments against future violations of certain U.S. securities laws. The NASD previously had imposed disciplinary action against Datek Securities, Mr. Citron and other individuals in connection with alleged violations of the rules and regulations regarding the SOES. These and other matters are discussed under "Information Concerning our Founder, Chairman and Chief Strategist."

There is a risk that some third parties will not do business with us, that some prospective investors will not purchase our securities or that some customers may be wary of signing up for service with us as a result of allegations against Mr. Citron and his past SEC and NASD settlements. We believe that some financial institutions and accounting firms have declined to enter into business relationships with us in the past, at least in part because of these matters. Other institutions and potential business associates may not be able to do business with us because of internal policies that restrict associations with individuals who have entered into SEC and NASD settlements. While we believe that these matters have not had a material impact on our business, they may have a greater impact on us when we become a public company, including by adversely affecting our ability to enter into commercial relationships with third parties that we need to effectively and competitively grow our business. Further, should Mr. Citron in the future be accused of, or be shown to have engaged in, additional improper or illegal activities, the impact of those accusations or the potential penalties from such activities could be exacerbated because of the matters discussed above. If any of these risks were to be realized, there could be a material adverse effect on our business or the market price of our common stock.

$$ made from IPO

should help to offset pain and suffering experienced when switching to their service, complete with noise, static, and horrible customer service. Perhaps DELL should offer short opportunities when they have bad experiences with customers...

Need to be a citizen?

I got this mail yesterday, and went and tried to register. However, apparently, permnent residency in USA is not sufficient for that. You need to be a citizen (need to a check a box confirming that "I am a US Citizen" before completing registration).

I've never come across this in any stock/share investing situations....

This isn't news

They filed their S-1 a while back. The story is true, despite commenters' claims to the contrary.

Vonage S-1 [sec.gov]

Sounds like a winner to me...or not

From their SEC filings [sec.gov]:

Our revenues were $18.7 million in 2003, $79.7 million in 2004, $269.2 million in 2005 and $118.9 million for the three months ended March 31, 2006. While our revenues have grown rapidly, we have experienced increasing net losses, primarily driven by our increase in marketing expenses. For the period from inception through March 31, 2006, our accumulated deficit was $467.4 million. For 2005 and the three months ended March 31, 2006, our net loss was $261.3 million and $85.2 million, respectively and our marketing expenses were $243.4 million and $88.3 million, respectively.

Sounds just like a .com of yesteryear winner with expenses nearly 2x the revenue.

Citizenship requirements for Vonage IPO

I have been a Vonage customer for a while and got the IPO email. However, the requirement seems to be that one needs to be a US citizen (which I am not). I wonder what the reason for this requirement is. I tried calling their number, but that was just a "outsourced" prospectus company. I am willing to risk a few bucks but seems like I may not get a chance.

S

This is old news

I've known about this for months. In fact, so has slashdot. http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/09/001 5221 [slashdot.org]

Going "public," you mean

I wonder how many slashdotters know what "IPO" even means.

Either it's spam, or it's a scam

So, there are two possibilities here. First, maybe this is a phishing scam. Second, maybe the voicemail is "legitimate," in which case Vonage is using its voicemail system to spam its customers.

Either way the answer is obvious: don't touch the stock.

Vonage

I'm going to open an IPO for my company. Anyone interested? :)

I signed up

For people NOT having a vonage account and who never used vonage, this makes no sense, and they should probably be wary of phishing scam.

However, for people like myself using vonage for 2+ years now, it immediately makes sense. I registered and am now waiting for the time when I can buy my shiny new stock certificates.

Considering that the email NEVER went to the people who DO NOT use vonage, well... the aluminum foil is just seeping into your crania right about now and polluting your otherwise smoothly functioning thought process.

Hells yeah!

How often do average blokes such as ourselves get a chance to get a crack at an IPO? Not very often to be sure, if ever. Most IPOs go through large investment houses that require you to be a customer and have more money than God deposited there to qualify for IPO shares. I think this is a good opportunity for us Vonage customers and am signed up and raring to get a hundred shares hopefully. At worst I'm out around $1600, but if Vonage doesn't screw things up, the upside could be the downpayment for a house. I'm in. I'll hopefully be "touching" some Vonage stock at ground floor prices. Eat your hearts out traditional landline losers! =]

Vociemail from "system" confirming legitimacy

If any actual vonage customers replied, they'd have said that on May 9, a voicemail had been sent from "system" (internal to vonage) that confirmed the legitimacy of the announcement.

Could you !!!FRIST P0ST!!! morons be bothered to check on anything in TFA?

From whois:
Registrant:
vonage holdings
      23 Main Street
      Holmdel, NJ 07733
      US

      Domain Name: VONAGEIPO.COM

      Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
            vonage holdings [e-mail]
            23 Main Street
            Holmdel, NJ 07733
            US
            732-365-2603

      Record expires on 25-Apr-2012.
      Record created on 20-Feb-2006.
      Database last updated on 10-May-2006 10:53:41 EDT.

      Domain servers in listed order:

      DNS1-NYC.VONAGE.NET 216.115.31.140
      AUTH00.KEWR0.S.VONAGENETWORKS.NET 69.59.252.42
      AUTH01.KEWR0.S.VONAGENETWORKS.NET 216.115.30.40

phishing? i think not

The vonageipo.com address is owned by vonage. That is easy to find out. However, the reason it is not on the vonage.com site could be some SEC regulation about advertising an IPO and having it separate from the main company website. I'm not sure about this, mainly because I am not a stock guy, but I could see this being an issue.

Buy or don't buy?

If you think Vonage is going to be a big player long term in VOIP.. BUY
If you think Vonage is going to get buried by ATT, Skype, Verizon, Sprint, etc.. Don't buy
I'm thinking Vonage is not going to live up to expectations since you can now get similar things from the companies people know.

Also the POTS companies are waking up a little bit. My in-laws are FINALLY dropping dial up because Sprint is offering them unlimited domestic POTS and ADSL for $70 a month. About the same price as cable broadband + Vonage. Bottom line is that Vonage's previous competitive advnatage (Price) is less of a factor or no factor. And their service is inferior to POTS IMO.

Note. I'm a former Vonage subscriber now using a combination of cellular and Skype for voice. In my case the price of Vonage was too high and the service redundant YMMV

vonage "spamming" using voicemails

I am a vonage employee. I can't discuss the IPO beyond whats been published (and to be honest I don't really know all that much more). However, the use of the Voicemail is not uncommon to send messages out. One of the towns in my area actually uses a voicemail/autodialer to let people know about problems, such as when a water main pipe burst etc. we use the voicemail and email, to insure that customer get the information. To many customer have filters on emails, don't get important information, and then complain. An extra voicemail? cry me a river. Did you get your ipo information? yes.

Customer appreciation or quick cash??

Some other folks question their motives as well:

http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2006/mft06050832.htm? ref=foolwatch [fool.com]

Second thoughts...

I was initially pretty excited about this. In fact, I even posted in favor of Vonage above. However, ever actually *reading* the prospectus, this clearly ain't no GOOG. Yikes. Many a thanks to my fellow /.'s for forcing me to really think this one out.

I'm not saying I *won't* but the stock, mind you, only that it deserves more thought than IPO is teh w00t!! (guilty).

Of course, this entire ordeal had made me reconsider those commercials: "people do stupid things...woo woo, woo woo woo!"

(Excuse a two-faced bastard, but my sn *is* Zaphod after all.)

Certain Customers

certain customers may be eligible to purchase common stock at IPO pricing.

They should have only left those messages on those Certain Customer's voicemails. Otherwise I'll wonder just how well this company is being run, and do I want to give them my money.

Personal experience with vonage.

I have to say, I am not sure I would WANT to invest in vonage. I use their service and had the following problems:

1) After four months they totally FAILED to transfer over my old phone number. (Note, the fact that they prominently advertised this ability was why I choose them over skype.)

2) Part of the problem was that their email system did not work correctly. I never recieved emails informing me that a problem existed, which caused their system to automatically close the attempt, so I had to restart it up again. A manager told me that the email they send when there is a problem is different from their standard email system and they had several problems with it. Note, I DID receive other communication from them, (including my bill), so it is not like yahoo was declaring vonage email as spam.

3) Despite the fact that this happened repeately, they never CALLED me. At one point, they were the ONLY people in the entire world that knew my phone number, but because of company policy (the STUPIDEST reason I ever heard for screwing you customers) they only communicated by email, never called the clients - even when they KNEW their email system did not work.

The phone service they give works, but the company itself is all screwed up. They need a massive shake-up.

The Risk No One Is Talking About

The prospectus should be enough to convince all but the most adamant conspiracy theorists that this isn't a hoax.

As for "scam", well, has it occurred to no one else that some scams are "legal"?

Everyone's talking about the financials, the financials, the financials.

What about the people, the people, the people? Specifically: Jeffrey A. Citron, Vonage's founder, chairman and chief strategist seems to have been a very naughty boy in a previous life.

( INFORMATION CONCERNING OUR FOUNDER, CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF STRATEGIST [sec.gov]) Hopefully, this bookmark will take you to the exact point in the lengthy document (just about all of which is "fine print") that details a younger Jeffrey's pattern of behavior.

I'll excerpt here:

"During a portion of the time that Mr. Citron was associated with Datek Securities, the SEC alleged that Datek Securities, Mr. Maschler, Mr. Citron and certain other individuals participated in an extensive fraudulent scheme involving improper use of the Nasdaq Stock Market's Small Order Execution System, or SOES."

"The SEC alleged that Mr. Citron and the other defendants accessed the SOES system to execute millions of unlawful proprietary trades, generating tens of millions of dollars in illegal profits."

"To settle the charges, Mr. Maschler, Mr. Citron and the other individuals paid $70 million in civil penalties and disgorgements of profits, of which Mr. Citron paid $22.5 million in civil penalties. These fines were among the largest fines ever collected by the SEC against individuals."

But, maybe there's not too much risk going forward, because:

"In addition, Mr. Citron was enjoined from future violations of certain provisions of the U.S. securities laws, including the antifraud provisions set forth in Section 17(a) of the Securities Act, Section 10(b) of the Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5 promulgated under the Exchange Act."

So, that means that he promised never to do it again, and we can take that to the bank, right?

Enron was all legal ... until it wasn't.

I'm a very satisfied Vonage customer and would probably have chosen to invest, until I saw this information. Would you invest in Kenneth Lay's next venture?

I'm not sure yet what this means to me as a customer. At the very least, I'll be researching my exit strategy and appreciate the various references to Skype and other alternatives.

Disappointed in /.ers

Seriously people what is it? Are you bitter all your precious Linux stocks tanked? Is Vonage not 'enough' of an underdog, like Apple, Linux, etc etc.? Bitter you don't qualify? There's a company that's asking for public investment to duke it out with the big telcos and you whine about it?!?! How long have I sat here and watched article after article on unfair telco practices, telcos unfairly edging out startups, telcos blocking VOIP/bittorrent/etc, telcos remerging into behemouth companies that can shift political influence in their favor on a whim. And now the moment of 'put up or shut up' and you all wimper about it being a tough battle. Go ahead. Search Slashdot for 'telcos'. I swear... I am now totally disappointed in /. Not to mention that the first hundred posts from technologically advanced community are about it being a scam without a bloody whois...

And they have already said the CEO is stepping down as a condition of the IPO, so no sketch at the top (at least no more than other companies).

Probably a good buy.

Apparently they're charging roughly 35 to 40$ USD a month, and 40$ CDN a month for their "North America Unlimited" plans.

Currently, VOIP outgoing providers sell time for about a cent per minute in North America, or as high as 1.5-2.0 cents for an incoming number. My roomate and I have a 1-888# which comes in to the house for a few cents a minute, with outgoing numbers going through 3 different VOIP providers of varying cost (cheapest first, of course). I think it costs us a grand total of 8$/month-2 months depending on usage.

Basically, Vonage is making so much money because traditional POTS is a cash cow, and VOIP makes it ridiculously cheap since you don't even need to run fibre -- BYOC!

Read the prospectus

I use Vonage and I like their service a lot -- so I decided to register for the IPO. You might like to read their prospectus -- it has things in it that you don't often see in prospectuses (i?) of companies going public such as:

"On March 1, 2004, we dismissed Amper, Politziner & Mattia P.C., as our independent registered public accounting firm previously engaged as the principal accountant to audit our financial statements. We re-engaged Amper, Politziner & Mattia P.C. on June 30, 2004, and dismissed the firm again on April 21, 2005. Amper, Politziner & Mattia P.C.'s report on our financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2003 did not contain any adverse opinion or disclaimer of opinion and was not otherwise qualified or modified as to uncertainty, audit scope or accounting principles."

I.e. they've fired and rehired their original auditors several times.

And:

"During a portion of the time that Mr. Citron (Founder, Chairman, and Chief Strategist of Vonage) was associated with Datek Securities, the SEC alleged that Datek Securities, Mr. Maschler, Mr. Citron and certain other individuals participated in an extensive fraudulent scheme involving improper use of the Nasdaq Stock Market's Small Order Execution System, or SOES."

Yup, their top guy has been involved in securities fraud (or at least accused of it). And consider just how egregious this kind of thing has to be to actually result in someone getting in actual trouble. Note that Mr. Citron was only 18 at the time and may have naively been sucked into malpractice by his associates, but still... not something you often see in a prospectus.

And then there's:

"Assumed initial public offering price per share...$17.00
Net tangible book value per share as of March 31, 2006...$(319.30)"

The total offering is for something like 30,000,000 shares, or roughly 20% of the company. So they're expecting punters to shell out $500,000,000 for 20% of a company losing money hand over fist which has 1.6 million customers.

If you compare it to Verizon (market cap $95B) that's very cheap *per customer* and absolutely lousy in every other respect. The question is, will Vonage be able to gain customers and become profitable faster than existing telcos are able to transition to VoIP.

It seems like the assumption is that there's money to be made in being "a phone company" and that all Vonage has to do is get enough customers and then one day it will be able to start gouging them enough to make a profit. Seems like a losing bet to me, so the only other question is whether greedy investors will buy up your (fundamentally) worthless Vonage stock after the IPO?

I'd suggest that there's money in providing data transmission, and that all the things you do with the data at each end (e.g. serve it, receive it (e.g. in a browser or phone), send it (e.g. from a camera or phone) will turn into or already are low margin interoperable commodities (e.g. like cameras, browsers, web servers, and phones). The artificially inflated profits afforded certain monopolies will, at best, be temporary, and I just don't see Vonage turning profits in time to pay off, especially since they don't own any key infrastructure (cell phone towers...). Meanwhile, I will continue to use my Vonage service, subsidized by credulous investors.

Eligibility for Shares at IPO Price

From this recent SEC filing by Vonage [sec.gov] it looks like to be eligible to get shares at the IPO price it needs to be true that (among other things--this is not legal or financial advice, etc):

The customer opened an account directly with Vonage America on or prior to December 15, 2005. The customer must have opened an account with Vonage America and not through a third-party wholesaler.

The customer maintained the Vonage account in good standing through February 1, 2006.

So, running out and signing up for a Vonage account doesn't look like a way to get in on the IPO. That seems like a dumb idea. How many people would sign a 1-yr or 2-yr contract just to have a shot at getting shares at the IPO price. Seems like bad business to me (but possibly necessitated by all the SEC rules...)

Investing Question

Having read over this, I want to learn more about exactly what's going on. I agree that it looks a bit like 1999 all over again. However, I only recently began following business and investing (small) money.

I think this looks like a potential short opportunity, but it would be nice to be able to use derivatives to cover my ass. As you were probably reminded when you signed up for a brokerage account, there is the potential for unlimited loss with any short sale.

What determines when derivatives become available, if they become available at all?

An interesting thought...

By law, public corporations must do what is in the best interests of their stockholders. By having a significant amount of their shareholders be their customers, and a significant number of their customers be their shareholders, it gives them an interesting position to work from. Specifically, I choose Vonage because it's cheap. Instead of raising their rates, they allow me to be a part owner of their system. This is good for me as a stockholder because I get a tangible "perk" of a cheap phone. As a customer, this is good because, by law, the company has to work for the best interests of the stockholder, who also happens to be me.

Perhaps blurring the lines between stockholder and customer is their intention? If so, I hope it works out well.

Re:I'm pretty certain...

The site is registered to the same entity that holds the main Vonage.com registration and it doesn't (currently) say anything about buying the domain. Maybe you hit it right at the start before they shut off domain parking.

Re:I'm pretty certain...

Well, it was sent directly to my voicemail, using the lady's voice that is in the voicemail prompting system, from Vonage itself. I'd upload the WAV of the voicemail, but i dont have a server available that can handle /. type of traffic.

Re:Reelin' 'Em in I see

For what it matters. vonageipo.com and vonage.com are both showing identical ownership in Whois. If someone is scamming using this they hijacked or spoofed the name , email, and phone number of the actual vonage DNS admin.

Re:Vonage is a scam

Now people say most people already have broadband so I shouldnt count that in the cost but in that case why shouldnt I just use Skype which is free ? Charging a monthly fee basically for providing a handset is definitely a scam.

I see you were modded a troll, but I'll just assume you don't know what Vontage is. Skype is free. This applies only if you call another Skype user.

What you get for the fee is nationwide calling to regular telephones. Skype out and Skype in are not free. Please compare apples to apples. Vontage includes most of the extras you would get with a phone plan including caller ID, 3 way calling, etc.

Re:Reelin' 'Em in I see

I was skeptical too. I checked their domain registration and it matches up with vonage.com. Also, when you enter your account number it successfully looks up your account information, a phishing scam wouldn't be able to do that.

Re:Vonage is a scam

I mean they advertise that you can have unlimited phone calls for 19.95 but never mention in their advertisements that you need to shell out another 40 dollars for cable internet.
First, What kind of **idiot** does not see the multiple notices that you must have a broadband connection available before signing up. Second, Skype is fine, but I would like to use an actual phone when I talk to people, not a headset on my computer. It's an ergonomics thing. I actualy do manage to step away from the screen once an a while. All the solutions I have seen for using an actual phone with skype are complicated and half assed. Most normal people do not want to deal with that level of complexity. Vonage just works, and is simple enough for even my mom to figure out. Besides, Skype is the same sort of scam. No one ever told me you have to have a computer turned on 24 hours a day! moron.

Re:Vonage is a scam

If you don't feel like paying $20 for decent phone service you don't have to. Yes, many households have broadband connections now. Yes, many still retain their regular POTS lines through their phone company. Yes, certain people may only break even in phone bill comparisons from their POTS line + broadband as opposed to their Vonage line + broadband, but that isn't eveyone. When you start factoring in cheaper long distance calls or all the extras like voicemail, callerid, 3-way calling, and numerous other features included in the Vonage service at no additional costs then things start to look better. Bitch about it all you want, but their service provides more than just "a handset".

Re:Reelin' 'Em in I see

VonageIPO.com is on a different web host (abuse address [e-mail] versus [e-mail]), has the old Vonage logo instead of the one on the Vonage.com site... hmm.

At the very least, it's suspicion inducing. If it's legit, Vonage should put something on their site - currently, a search for "IPO" comes up empty.

Re:Reelin' 'Em in I see

Their SEC filings are here [sec.gov].

A story on it over at VoIP Magazine is here [voip-magazine.com].

Their (not yet active) trading charts can be found here [marketwatch.com] under the symbol "VG".

If this is a fishing scam, it's a pretty darn good one. More likely, Vonage wanted their financial issues to be separate from their marketing site and didn't think about how that would look.

Re:I'm pretty certain...

It certainly appears legit, here's the registrar information:

Whois Server Version 1.3

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net/ [internic.net]
for detailed information.

      Domain Name: VONAGEIPO.COM
      Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
      Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
      Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com/ [networksolutions.com]
      Name Server: DNS1-NYC.VONAGE.NET
      Name Server: AUTH00.KEWR0.S.VONAGENETWORKS.NET
      Name Server: AUTH01.KEWR0.S.VONAGENETWORKS.NET
      Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
      Updated Date: 08-may-2006
      Creation Date: 25-apr-2005
      Expiration Date: 25-apr-2012

Re:Vonage is a scam

You're kidding right? Why don't you take that argument to iTunes who doesn't tell you in addition to the $0.99 a song they charge you have to shell out $40 a month for an ISP, and upwards into four figures for a computer. Couple hundred for an iPod, hell - make 'em pay the $38 a month it costs for the electricity to power your house, which God help them if the mortgage is anything like mine, they'll go broke. Idiot.

If you have cable/private T at houre house right now - it's $40 for that plus $60 a month for your average LEC carrier phone line. $100 total telcom bill. Vonage drops it to $60 a month. If you have DSL you're screwed because you need to phone line (unless you have OneLink or something).

It's not for everyone but it's much cheaper than Verizon's offering of $40 a month for VoIP over their DSL line. And the cable company's similarly priced VoIP offering.

Re:Vonage is a scam

Not only are you a troll, you don't know what you're talking about. Skype does not equal Vonage.

Skype is free only for computer to computer calls.

Skype charges 1.7 Euro cents per minute (about 2 US cents) for calls to real phone numbers. And you have purchase that time in advance in blocks of 10 Euros.

If you want to get a real phone number you have to get SkypeIn, which is 30 Euros per year.

Skype can't be used for 911 at all, while Vonage is working on it and has gotten it together in many locales.

All Skype phones plug in only to a computer, not a cable modem.

Yes, Skype is a bargain and I use SkypeOut myself to call a friend in Australia but Vonage it ain't.

That having been said I think Sunrocket [sunrocket.com] is a better deal. $199 a year, they give you the phone, and you don't have to keep your computer on 24/7. Also, you can hack it so you that you can use your home's existing phone wiring to plug in more phones.

Re:Reelin' 'Em in I see

The voicemail came from within Vonage's own system. Check your voicemail from the web, and it'll point that out.

Granted, it might've made much more sense to have run everything through the vonage.com domain, but anyone who's sending a message from within the system probably has enough access to screw with my account already.

(On top of that, one the front page, they ask you to log in with your IPO site credentials, not your Vonage user account credentials. You don't get to set up a login on vonageipo.com until you tell them your account number and email address. I think you're jumping the gun by just a bit.)

Re:I'm pretty certain...

It's not a scam. Do you live in a vacuum? Every financial show has been talking about this for weeks. The general consensus is that it is probably a good short term buy, but long term regulation and competition will force them out of business.