Vonage VP locked in shouting match with INQ hack

SO THERE I was, minding my own business at the 2004 Broadband Summit ( here) in downtown D.C. last week, wandering through a small tidy collection of vendor exhibits when I come upon Vonage and briefly start fondling the Motorola VT1000 voice over IP gizmo.

The VT1000 is a sleek black box that has a pair of RJ-11 phone jacks and an Ethernet port. You plug in a telephone and a broadband connection and get VoIP through the Vonage service.

If you sign up for Vonage for two months or so, they give you the VT1000 for free. I'd like to buy a VT1000 and play around with Free World Dialup, but you can't get one off-the-shelf or on the web commercially, other than from Ebay.

Vonage and Moto have some sort of low-key exclusive, and Vonage has the unlock codes to let someone in to reprogramme it - it comes from Vonage locked up and pre-programmed to their service. Actual cost of the box is supposedly around $49.

I tell the three Vonage people, one that has "Vice President" on her card, that I like the Moto box, want to buy it, but the only way I can get it is to sign up for service, then cancel, and then get the unlock codes from Vonage customer support—

"Why would you want to do that?" asks Vonage #1 sneering, "Run Free World Dial Up?"
"Sure, why not. Just get your box, unlock it—"
"We don't do that," Ms. Vice President.
"I saw it on the 'Net that you—"
"We don't do that," Ms. Vice President again.
"Yes, you do, it's—
"We don't do that," she says for the third time, letting some Jersey attitude creep into her voice.
"Don't tell me that, I've seen it on the 'Net—
"We don't do that," she says for the fourth time, the intonation into her voice implying that I'm making it up and have no clue as to what I'm talking about.
"Look, if you don't believe me, run Google and find out. I'm not making this up."

So, I wonder, maybe I misread something or misunderstood what I read and I owe someone an apology.

But using Google and the keywords "Motorola VT1000 unlock" brings up a Broadband Reports web site threads, here.

"Vonage will usually unlock an MTA if you cancel the service, pay an unlocking fee ($15) and forfeit the cancellation charge ($40, essentially you buy the unit for $55)."

From the post, it is pretty clear that A) Vonage has a policy to unlock the devices and B) the company does it often enough that they charge $15 to cough up the codes to get into the box. Why Ms. VP was so hostile about it is beyond me, but it's nice to know that AT&T's VoIP service is $10/month cheaper than Vonage. µ