Vonage gets vocal on VoIP

Vonage has received a $200m investment from financial backers which it will use for a UK marketing offensive touting the benefits of voice over IP.

The company offers VoIP services for broadband subscribers, using a VoIP adapter that transfers the internet signal to an analog phone line.

Designed to be similar in use to a traditional landline, the VoIP service is significantly cheaper. Vonage offers unlimited domestic calling for £9.99 per month in the UK and $24.99 in the US.

The company plans to use the $200m investment to increase its marketing efforts in the US and Canada, and for a "hard launch" in the UK.

"We bring in customers at a slower space and learn more about the market and work out the bugs. Then we do a hard launch," a company spokesman told vnunet.com.

Vonage users can pick a telephone number from a list of 114 UK area codes, as well as numbers in the US or Canada. The first number is included in the service and additional numbers are available at $4.99 per month.

The company has sold over 600,000 subscriptions so far and claims to be growing at a rate 15,000 new subscriptions a week. The latest round of funding brings the total investment in the VoIP provider to $408m.

Vonage is considering a launch in Asia by the end of this year, but further European expansion will not happen until 2006, according to the spokesman.