What Vonage customers care about
Independently offered but promoted by Vonage as an online help resource and user community, The Vonage Forum has just passed three million page views.
I wanted to see what current, prospective and ex-Vonage users were talking about. So, I registered with this forum.
Once you're in, you get access to a Top 10 area that ranks the most read news stories and reviews, as well as themost downloaded files (usually PDFs),via links posted on the Forum.
The rankings are compiled throughout the availability of each document. This means that partially due to the inherent seniority system implied by such ranking criteria, older stories tend to be ranked higher.
Still, I thought you might like to know what seems to matter to the Forum's more than 4,300 registered members.
The most widely read news story is Today's Stock Watch is for SkyFrames, Inc., an October, 2003 story that mentioned Vonage was teaming up with the satellite Internet service broadband provider to offer U.S. trooops stationed in Iraq the opportunity to call home for the holidays.
The second-most read news story is Companies try to reduce costs with online phone service, an undated piece from the San Antonio Express-News. The popularity of this piece tells me that current and prospective Vonagecustomers often seek information that would quantify and justify their migration to VoIP.
By far the most widely read review is Vonage Pros and Cons. Common threads seem to be the economical price point and easy configurabilityof the service, while less-than-stellar customer service seems to be an issue with a few posters.
The most frequently downloaded document is Judge Davis; Decision in Vonage v. Minnesota PUC, which described theruling in whichU.S. District Court Judge MichaelDavis granted Vonage relief fromMinnesota Public Utility Commission regulations.
The interest in this ruling is natural, and not justfor policy wonks. Customersareconcernedhow this whole regulatory tug-of-war between the states and the FCC willpan out - and how this panning out will affect their bills and service.