Why Vonage subscriber growth has slowed

Russell Shaw provides his reasons and asks why is Vonage subscriber growth flat-lining?

I would comment there, but the barrier to comment imposed by ZDnet is too high (must “join” ZDnet with a tedious sign up process).

So I will answer here. The reason is quite simple, and I think it’s the biggest elephant in the VoIP room: HOME PHONE SERVICE IS NOT BROKEN.

Fix my cell phone. Fix my voicemail (maybe). But my home phone works and even if I am paying too much, it’s not a big enough problem to jump through a lot of flaming hoops to change anything. There are bigger fish to fry before I worry about my home phone service. If anything, I might check the plans from my existing carrier or even switch to a cheap long-distance service (which I can do without any number transfer hassles), but change my whole service? Nah. Too much trouble. Before I go there, it’s no more trouble to just drop fixed service entirely and use my cell phone. That’s the math real users are doing.

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