Vonage was king of VoIP. For a time. By introducing aggressive marketing campaigns, the airwaves were abuzz with Vonage ads. Vonage marketed so frequently and with such an overwhelming ferocity that VoIP almost became synonymous with Vonage.

Yet it was not to be, eventually Vonage would lose out to other competitors, not from within the local VoIP start-ups themselves, but from external threats: the big telephone companies themselves. Not to be outdone and lose all of their customers to the new growing Voice over IP market, the big telcos decided to follow the old slogan “if you can’t beat them, join them” and take on the VoIP market proactively. Their tremendous successes in cutting into the VoIP market were still not enough to declare Vonage out of the race, at first.

But Vonage over-marketed perhaps. After spending millions upon millions on marketing, Vonage was left with a massive debt. Despite all this, it seems Vonage was confident in it’s potential earnings and began to launch an IPO. The IPO first skyrocketed. That victory was to be short-lived. Vonage’s new IPO failed mostly due to the massive debts Vonage was facing. Perhaps had Vonage adopted a more slow but steady approach, their earnings may have been better. The big telcos might of not gotten involved as quickly if they did not feel there was a threat. The constant Vonage bombardment and hype may have scared the telcos to prematurely enter the VoIP market and further destroy the debt-ridden Vonage’s chances.

Then there’s Jeffrey Citron, CEO of Vonage, who was fined $29.2 million and banned from the securities industry in a fraud case. With such a tarnished past, and the suspicious way the company was run, this has caused many to speculate if an ambitious enough CEO would not just plan out this entire ordeal in advance. It’s simple enough, invest in a start-up, hype up the product with an overly aggressive marketing campaign, launch an IPO, and cash out. One can hope prosecution follows, but it may be hard to prove any criminal negligence in this situation. In Vonage’s case, perhaps the public may never know, or perhaps it really was all just an overly ambitious venture gone wrong.

All in all, the Voice over IP market may have started premature. Many VoIP services experienced rocky starts that led many customer exoduses. The pricing and over factors could have been greatly improved with the right circumstances. As with all things in life, perhaps slow and steady would have won the race for Vonage.