More predictions of doom for VoIP service providers like Vonage:

Imagine you are a decision maker at a very large U.S. ISP. You are annoyed because your once-lucrative phone business is slowly being eroded by a new wave of VOIP providers such as Vonage, Skype and Net2phone.

These parasitic phone services are running on your high speed data circuits without paying a connection charge or royalty of any kind, but constantly offering dial tone at a lower cost than you, essentially stealing from your profitable consumer and business phone plans.

Well what are you going to do? The answer is simple — just swat these blood sucking leeches and be done with them before they grow too big! You call all your henchmen together for a meeting, stomp your foot, just like something right out of a Hollywood script. "I want these buggers taken care of!" you’d shout.

That’s a dramatic scenario — and perhaps one that consumers don’t question. Believe it or not, however, the operators of large telco companies, though profit driven, do not run roughshod over the consumer. Below we’ll detail some of the more likely scenarios and trade-offs being made in the face of this new competition.