No, what makes this "newsworthy" is exactly what Om Malik says: VoIP is being oversold.
Let's be clear here. Vonage is not a VoIP company. They do not offer a VoIP service. They are a phone company that offers a type of phone service which leverages VoIP to handle the last mile connection to subscribers. Many other phone companies such as Verizon or Qwest leverage VoIP in the interLATA or international parts of their network. They aren't VoIP companies either. For true VoIP companies look at XTen who make a VoIP softphone or Grandstream who makes physical VoIP telephones or Digium who sponsor the Asterisk PBX software. VoIP is just a suite of protocols that can run over anybody's IP network. Companies like Vonage are signing up subscribers because they provide real phone service connecting you to copperline subscribers on the real phone network. That is their business model. Verizon could sell exactly the same sort of service to subscribers in California leveraging the Internet last mile in exactly the same way as Vonage. Vonage and Verizon are just phone companies, not VoIP companies. --Michael Dillon