Vonage CEO Steps Out

How Jeffrey Citron can be running a public company as Interim CEO likely needs some explaining, but the big news this morning is the stepping down of CEO and Director Mike Snyder from Vonage, the legally troubled VoIP provider.

As part of the announcement Vonage also announced that layoffs will be implemented to help slow down their cash burn.

Sally Cohen of Forrester Research told me, "I see this development as simply a manifestation of the string of troubles Vonage has been experiencing in the past 1+ years, including slower than expected subscriber growth, higher than expected subscriber churn and acquisition costs, and now the patent struggle with Verizon. Since the consumer pure-play VoIP market is still a niche market, Vonage’s most recent problems and their proposed organizational and cost-cutting solutions, could spell trouble for the market as a whole and other pure-play providers – through reduction of marketing, and thus consumer awareness of and interest in the technology – but could also give the cable companies offering VoIP services a boost (I believe the cablecos were best positioned to move VoIP into the mainstream even before Vonage’s recent patent and, now, CEO troubles). This all, by no means, spells the end of VoIP, however."