Vonage develops workarounds to Verizon patents

It’s been a mixed week of news for Vonage. The company announced that it has successfully developed workarounds for two of three VoIP patents contested by Verizon Communications and also posted a big jump in revenue.

On a less positive note, net subscriber line additions plummeted 66%.

VoIP start-up Vonage was sued by Verizon for infringing patents on VoIP technology. It was found guilty of breaching three Verizon patents in March and fined $58 million. It is now appealing against the ruling.

Vonage was concerned that it wouldn’t be able to find a way round the contested patents in order to continue providing its service.

However the company has now completed the deployment of workarounds for two name translation patents and has completed the development of a wireless patent workaround.

The workarounds were deployed without anyone noticing that the technology had changed.

Yesterday Vonage also reported a 43 percent jump in revenue to $206 million for the 2007 second quarter, with a narrowed adjusted loss from operations of $18 million, compared with $60 million in the second quarter a year ago.

The ongoing dispute with Verizon does seem to have subscriber numbers though, with Vonage reporting just 57,000 net subscriber line additions, taking it to 2.45 million lines.