Vonage Tops 100,000 Mark

Vonage received an infusion of more than $35 million in funding in November 2003 and has maintained a strong marketing campaign that includes national television advertising, an expenditure that other consumer voice-over-IP service providers have not made.

The company has also benefitted from the growth of broadband homes in its service area, the United States, in the last year. U.S. broadband deployments topped 20 million homes by the end of 2003, or about 20 percent of all households.

Vonage sells its service on both a retail and wholesale basis. Most customers sign up through the company's Web site, while others are acquired through wholesale partners that include Earthlink, Armstrong, Advanced Cable Communications and the Coldwater Board of Public Utilities.

The Vonage service is based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) technology and provides a number of calling features as part of its packages, including voice mail, call forwarding, call waiting, call transfer, caller ID and call return. The company recently concluded a deal with Motorola Inc., making that vendor the exclusive provider of its terminal adaptors, the devices that enable a traditional phone to be connected to a broadband voice service.