Mark Evans added yet another interesting twist to the Vonage rumor mill (which has been quite active lately, thanks in part to Rich Tehrani's post about Bell South making a $3.5 billion offer for the VoIP service provider - even Rich admitted the cost per sub, at over $4,000, is extremely high).  It turns out that Mark discovered an intriguing post on one of the Broadband Forums, which speculates that Vonage CEO Jeff Citron would make a pitch to acquire Vocaltec and hence speed up the process for Vonage to become a public company by merging it with Vocaltec (of course, Vonage would acquire control of Vocaltec, which then would likely change its name to Vonage).

This would also be a bullet-proof way to circumvent the SEC prohibition for him to associate with any "broker or dealer in the securities industry" in the US - since Vocaltec is based in Israel.  While this caveat should not quite prevent Mr. Citron from taking his company public, it is a bit of a dark cloud hanging over his head, and would be something taken under consideration by investors going through a company prospectus.  It is common practice for a big company willing to go public quickly (i.e. without massive amounts of paperwork) to merge in a small, already-public company. 

Interestingly enough, it is an intriguing fusion between Vonage and Vocaltec, and there are a few more synergies than just fast-tracking the public trading of Vonage stock.  Besides all its VoIP know-how, Vocaltec had its roots in the software development side (being a VoIP toll bypass pioneer with client applications such as the Internet Phone), and that's an area that Vonage can always add some extra expertise.  For those of you not familiar with the old Internet Phone (I was an original beta tester who later got the software for free, as a token gesture), I went back on the Wayback Machine and surely enough, found an archived version of the Vocaltec site (from December 1996). 

The other interesting common denominator in the story is Jeff Pulver.  It turns out (according to Light Reading and a press release on the Vocaltec site) that the well known and much acclaimed VoIP guru has made a commitment to purchase an equity stake in the company.  Jeff's first Free World Dialup was based on the Vocaltec Internet Phone, so he is obviously very, very familiar with Vocaltec (since its early days).  Also, Jeff was the co-founder of Vonage.

While this might point to a Vonage/Vocaltec fusion, one needs to remember that all of this is purely speculative for now, but interesting food for thought, nevertheless.  I sincerely wish the best for all the Vocaltec family - they are a gifted bunch and pretty much pioneered VoIP from a consumer-centric perspective.  Hopefully they will continue to achieve great things by either receiving some angel money or being bought by another company.