Gearhead this week discusses some "interesting" issues with using Vonage, one of which is random service outages. This intrigues me because I'm pretty technical, and if it is really hard for me to get the problem solved, what does the soccer mom do when things go wrong?

And that's just the tip of the iceberg for Vonage. I predict the company will find the going a lot tougher over the next few months for several reasons.

The first is that the competition is heating up. Skype, for example, might become very competitive now that it is owned by eBay, although much depends on whether eBay can truly absorb and integrate Skype (debatable given that VoIP is hardly among eBay's core competencies).

Even more challenging is all the other VoIP providers. I recently read that more than 1,500 companies in the U.S. offer some form of VoIP. The majority provide service based on Session Initiation Protocol as does Vonage, but unlike Vonage these systems are interoperable - anyone to anyone else.

This is hugely important to Vonage's future. It is much like the early days of the 'Net when AOL initially lacked and then later offered only limited TCP/IP connectivity. If AOL had remained isolated it would be non-existent today. Such could be the fate of Vonage if it doesn't play nicely.

The third reason is pricing. Vonage offers all-you-can-eat calling for the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico for $24.99 per month, while Broadvoice, for example, offers the same service with 19 more countries for $19.95 per month. Admittedly when you add up the costs of activation and other charges over the course of a year the difference only amounts to about $33 in Broadvoice's favor, although if you talk to, say, the U.K. for a couple of hours each week the difference would be more like $95 per year.

The point is that pricing pressure can only increase and Vonage with its customer base of now more than 1 million users is locked in to a business model and might have problems re-scaling to lower per-user revenues.

The best hope for Vonage is to be acquired by one of the Internet big boys . . . such as Google. Google is definitely interested in VoIP, and it has been widely reported that it has been talking with many of the main players, including, rumor has it, Vonage. Might we see "Goonage"?

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