I wouldn't think anyone would consider Sprint a dying company. They just acquired Nextel so they've got money to spend.
Maybe as an ILEC (which they are here in Ohio) they are viewing Vonage and Voiceglo as a force that needs to be stopped to prevent further eroding of their POTS network. I know that I cost SBC money when I dropped them for Vonage. They aren't getting the $$ for that line installed to my home anymore. (Which makes me downright giddy when I think about it.) Imagine if my whole neighborhood switched after SBC had built-out facilities... that would cost SBC a lot of money. They put those POTS lines in counting on them being active and producing income for a long time. Even if service is provided by a CLEC, the line makes money for the ILEC. But if the line is switched off before the payoff horizon, they lose money. Vonage just announced, with much fanfare, that they had hit 1 million lines. In the big scheme that isn't a lot, but that is still 1 million POTS lines that have been abandoned and are costing someone money. Maybe Sprint sees this as an opportunity to leverage their patents to stem the flow of people that are switching? It would explain the timing and why, if the patents have been around for 2, 3, or 4 years, that they are just now trying to enforce them. The lawsuit may be frivolous... Or maybe they are throwing the suit at Vonage & Voiceglo thinking it may distract them enough to break some of their momentum... Or maybe Sprint has something, and if they get lucky, it goes their way and tosses the entire thing in the blender? Who knows? But I can't believe Sprint would pull a SCO and sue just to impress the investors. They don't really need to. Jason -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dave Cotton Sent: Friday, October 07, 2005 4:57 AM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Sprint Nextel sueing over VoIP patents On Fri, 2005-10-07 at 01:34 -0700, John Todd wrote: > To answer my own question: no, it doesn't seem like there is anything > Asterisk-specific in the suit. It seems that Sprint is claiming that > they own the rights to pretty much any VoIP technology. Carry on, > everyone; this will be thrown out with the rest of the garbage after > Vonage and others spend huge amounts of time and effort staving off > the frivolity lawyers. <sigh> > Is this just another dying company, like SCO, trying to give the impression it's still got something for investors. In SCO's case it appears nothing more than a pump and dump exercise. -- Dave Cotton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users