Vonage has major service outage

Vonage got hit by a major service outage today.

The first signs of a massive Vonage service access issue started popping up on posts to the independently operated Vonage VoIP Forum. I've long used the Forum to gauge the sentiments of Vonage users- and to monitor service and equipment issues.

Apparently, Forum Member rickster was the first to notice a problem. In starting the Is all of Vonage completely down? thread, Rickster wrote: "There are no service announcements, but I can't connect to either www.vonage.com or the member site. I have a dial tone, but cannot make any calls."

The thread soon started to fill up with lots of "me-too" posts. And then the bloggers started noticing- referring to, or linking to, the thread. People like Om Malik, Mark Evans, and yes, me.

In response, Vonage sent out some updates. Om reports two of them:

“Vonage is having a minor website outage due to firewall policy and it will be fixed in a matter of minutes in case you receive any additional inquiries. Thanks for touching base.”

“In repairing the firewall issue, there may have been very minor isolated call disruptions, such as a fast busy signal but everything should be fine now.” The litany of compliants over on the Vonage forums are out of control, and are coming from all parts of the US."

Vonage also sent out an email to customers that said:

“At this time, some customers may be experiencing difficulty placing outbound calls. Also, access to our website may be slow or intermittent for a short time. Our engineers are aware of the issue and working on a prompt resolution. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”

I'll be back on later with an update, including my perspective on the implications of what all this means.