Thursday, May 8, 2008
Vonage: It’s Getting Better All the Time
Vonage’s slow death is … well, it’s slowing.The financially struggling Internet-phone company reported today a smaller first-quarter loss thanks largely to prudent cost cuts.
Great news for Vonage (VG), which has been tormented by a barrage of costly legal battles and set upon by new and powerful rivals. The company’s net loss shrank to $8.96 million, or 6 cents a share, from a loss of $72.3 million, or 47 cents, in the year-earlier quarter.
Sadly for Vonage, the company’s Q1 loss isn’t the only thing that shrank. Subscriber growth did as well. The company signed up just 30,000 new subscribers in the quarter, a big decline from a year earlier when it added nearly 166,000 subscribers. Worse, turnover rate increased to 3.3% from 3% in the fourth quarter.
Still, Vonage is a bit healthier than it’s been for some time now. So while it may not exactly be on the road to recovery, it’s at least crawling in its general direction. To that end, the company’s inked a deal to resell Covad’s DSL service under the Vonage Broadband name. An interesting idea, in that it will allow Vonage to bundle a broadband offering with its Internet telephony services like most other phone and cable companies on the planet. But DSL? Really? At a time when Verizon (VZ) is expanding its FiOS fiber-optic service and Comcast (CMCSA) is boosting the speed of its high-tier cable broadband?
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Fill the fun bar all the way to the top and keep it there for a few seconds to have a successful date.
… in 2 Minutes
3. Among those earning 10-figure incomes, Mr. Soros’s total annual compensation is greater than Mr. Falcone’s. Mr. Falcone’s is greater than Mr. Griffin’s. Mr. Griffin’s is smaller than Mr. Soros’s, and Mr. Paulson’s is greater than Mr. Soros’s. In descending order, list the men by the respective hotness of their trophy wives.
Dear Mr. Prince: It’s been three days since you delivered your keynote address, “When Doves Cry,” to our organization, the American Ornithological Society.
I’ll have the “J&J fresh intestine pot,” a side of “cowboy leg” and the “carbon burns black bowel” to go, please.
Starring Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell
… in CSS
Lenovo has its way with Apple’s MacBook Air ads
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where my cemetery plot is, and what my lousy adulthood was like …
googletimewarner.com? googlepoo.com?