Vonage offered some of its own customers shares in its IPO, and the stock fell on its first day. Those customers were angry. They had signed up for a simple idea. They plugged a small adapter into their broadband connection, kept a regular phone number and got unlimited calling across the country for a flat monthly fee. Vonage's ads were everywhere. By 2006 it had more than a million and a half subscribers.

A Trader's Phone Company

Jeffrey Citron, a former electronic trading entrepreneur, started Vonage in 2001. The bet was that broadband homes would drop expensive landline plans for internet calling if it felt like a normal phone. Its flat monthly fee for unlimited calls undercut traditional phone plans by a wide margin. Vonage spent heavily on marketing to win customers fast, and it lost a lot of money doing so.

From Homes to Business

Vonage priced its IPO at $17 a share in May 2006 on the New York Stock Exchange. It was the best-known challenger to the old phone companies. The stock kept falling after its first day. Patent suits from Verizon added to its trouble, and the cable companies were coming for the same customers. Vonage later rebuilt itself around business communications. In 2022 Ericsson bought it for about $6.2 billion.

Cover: Stowing Sail, Winslow Homer. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a sailing ship (a voyage).