Sprint seeks $103 million from Vonage
Sprint wants $103 million in damages from Vonage for patent violations, according to reports emerging from the Kansas City federal court where a jury trial got under way Tuesday. Sprint’s attorney told the jury that it was entitled to a 7 percent royalty, which came to around $103 million based on Vonage revenues of $1.3 billion. Vonage is contesting Sprint’s patent claims in the 10th U.S. District Court in the Midwestern city.
Vonage lost a similar battle in March, when a federal court in Virginia ordered the Holmdel, N.J. standalone VoIP provider to fork over $58 million to Verizon. The decision is pending appeal. Vonage chief Jeff Citron will address investors Monday, Sept. 10 via webcast of a presentation at the Jefferies 5th Annual Communications Conference at the Mandarin Hotel in New York starting at 1:50 PM.
The question now is how long Vonage remains a standalone. The litigation has slowed down subscriber uptake and cost the company more than $16 million this year.
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All Sprint is trying to do is destroy the smaller players. They fear the smaller VoIP companies because they not only have a better product, they are managed better and treat their customers better.
I would be surprised if Sprint has a strong future due to some basic business practices of theirs. Like many of the other huge wireless corporations, Sprint insists on locking people into long contracts. If Sprint was confident in their offerings they wouldn’t try to lock people into staying with them.
My company is in Austin, TX and Sprint insisted that they have excellent coverage and could provide us the GPS tracking that we needed. We got over a dozen phones and two high-speed data cards. Since we started service, we have had terrible coverage, text messages take up to 12 hours to reach the recipients, and the high-speed data cards have never worked. The GPS tracking was a joke and NOT what they showed to us.
We have talked to the sales people, tech support, corporate, and have never gotten a response. Recently they have raised the text messaging rates even though we were under contract.
What is the purpose of a contract if the company can change the rates but won’t let the consumer out of the contract?
People are starting to wise up about Sprints deceptive practices and how cellphone contracts do not benefit the consumer, only the vendor. All they do is lock you into service that doesn’t work.
Adam Brown
Longhorn Services - longhorn-services.com
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