Digital Daily » Internet telephony

Skype: Well, Yeah $2 Billion Is Low Considering What You Paid for It…

John Paczkowski — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:50:50 +0000

Analysts value Skype at roughly $2 billion. But it seems John Donahoe, CEO of parent company eBay, values it at a bit more than that. Asked to put a price on the Internet telephony business, Donahoe declined, but he said $2 billion is “low.”

And I suppose it is, given that eBay (EBAY) paid $2.6 billion for Skype in October 2005 and subsequently took a $1.43 billion charge on it.

“I think it’s worth a lot and I think the numbers speak for themselves,” he added. “There are not many properties that have that kind of growth.”

EBay plans to spin Skype off in an initial public offering in 2010.

$3.1 Billion VoIP Provider. Like New. FAST FREE SHIPPING!!

John Paczkowski — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 07:01:37 +0000

eBay (EBAY) may have finally figured out a way to get the sort of return it needs from its infamous $2.6 billion (+$1.4-billion writedown) misstep – the 2005 acquisition of Skype. Unload it. Word on the street has it that Google (GOOG) is considering a partnership with the the telephony service – and perhaps even an acquisition. Which would make sense. Certainly, with Gmail, Google Talk, and the massive distribution platform that is Google.com, Google’s in a far better position to make good use of Skype than eBay is.

Few Things More Pathetic Than an Argument Between the Already Dead and the Dying

John Paczkowski — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 17:26:25 +0000

SunRocket may be dead and buried, but like the corpses in Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead,” there’s a bit of life left in it yet. Sherwood Partners, the company presiding over the dissolution of SunRocket’s assets, sued Vonage last week, accusing the Internet telephony outfit of wrongfully using the SunRocket subscriber list to solicit new customers.

The suit claims Vonage acquired the list during confidential acquisition talks between the two companies and has done SunRocket “irreparable harm and injury” by using it without permission. Vonage, for its part, acknowledges its confidentiality agreement with SunRocket but claims it legitimately purchased the list from a third-party broker. “We believe the suit lacks merit,” Vonage spokesman Charles Sahner told the Register. “We obtained a VOIP subscriber list through an established marketing list broker. We were assured that the data was legally obtained and could be used without violating anyone’s proprietary rights.”

If that’s truly the case, the deal worked out quite nicely for Vonage, which likes to fancy itself the belle of the VOIP ball despite its lousy financials and semi-dire legal straits. In the two days after SunRocket went belly-up, Vonage signed up 11,000 new subscribers–many of them old SunRocket customers. “We were the leader from the very beginning and we have that critical mass and the scale,” Sahner said back in July. “We helped put (SunRocket) out of business. They had a cheap product and they couldn’t compete.”

SunRocket Takes a Dirt Nap

John Paczkowski — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 07:01:13 +0000

SunRocket, the “No Gotchas” Internet phone company, is apparently the “No Employees” phone company as well. It has ceased operations and is transitioning its 200,000 or so customers to rival telephony ventures after reportedly failing to negotiate a sale. “We have just been informed that any and all last-ditch efforts to keep operations running as well as a potential sale of the company have not gone through and that SunRocket will cease operations at COB today,” Sonya Jefferson, SunRocket’s Director of Routing and Carrier Services wrote in a message to employees yesterday. “As such, today is my last day and everyone else you may have worked with at SunRocket.”

You can almost hear the chorus of cheers over at Vonage, can’t you? Whoo, hoo, hoo- hoo- hoo … Though really, the company has little cause to celebrate. Since its ill-starred IPO, its fortunes, too, have floundered. Today its shares were trading for a while at $2.93–down, despite the sudden departure of one of its rivals.