When Marc Lefar was appointed chief marketing officer of Cingular Wireless in 2003, he was faced with the unenviable task of reversing the company’s first loss of subscribers in its history.

He will come across a similarly daunting challenge as chief executive of Vonage, the Internet-calling provider based in Holmdel, N.J., that on July 29 said Lefar will take by from interim CEO Jeffrey Citron. Clearly, Vonage is in better shape now than when Citron took back the reins

from Mike Snyder in April 2007, when many analysts fretted the company might go under. [Citron had been CEO before Snyder].

Still, Vonage’s growth is at a standstill, customer dissatisfaction is on the rise, and competition is gathering steam. The company added a mere 30,133 new customers in the first quarter, down from 165,646 a year earlier. The industry as a whole, meanwhile, added about 1.4 million subscribers, about the same […]

Orginal post by Top Tech News