Vonage Announces Plans to Move Headquarters to Holmdel, NJ

There’s a new neighbor coming to town, and area residents and officials are more than happy to be rolling out the welcome wagon.

Vonage Holdings Corporation announced in March 2005 that they will be establishing their headquarters in Holmdel, NJ, moving into the building on Route 520 and Holmdel Road that was formerly the home of Prudential Property Casualty & Insurance. The 358,932-square-foot facility, with two stories and set on 88 acres, was sold in 2003. It was ultimately purchased in March by Mack-Cali Realty Corporation, who in turn signed a 12-year, five-month lease with Vonage.

Vonage is currently the nation’s largest Internet phone service provider, offering local and long distance telephone service using a new technology called Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, to customers with a high-speed connection for less cost than other phone services. It has been growing at a very rapid pace since it was founded in January 2001. According to Gerald Maloney, Senior Vice President of Finance, the company started off with a small group of employees and about 7,500 customers in 2002, and saw that number increase to 75,000 in 2003, then 390,000 in 2004. In 2005 alone so far, the customer base has gone from 400,000 as of January 4 to 500,000 as of March 7, and, by mid-April, was about 550,000 in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. It is expected to reach 1 million lines by the end of the year.

Currently located on Route 27 in Edison, the company employs more than 1,000 workers, with plans to hire an additional 1,000 by year’s end in all areas of operations, but primarily in customer care. Other positions will include engineering, software development, and finance.

Mr. Maloney said that the company did not yet know how many of the current employees will decide to make the move to Holmdel following the recent announcement. He explained that, in choosing where to relocate, the firm’s goal had been to look for a location that was within a reasonable distance from Edison and to be able to take over an entire building to become its corporate headquarters since it has outgrown its current offices.

After modernizing the facility to meet the needs of its operations and to offer a number of employee amenities such as a cafeteria, day care center, and gymnasium, Vonage is expected to start moving into the building around Labor Day and to be fully operational there around Thanksgiving. Initially, approximately three-quarters of the facility will be occupied immediately, with an additional 25% occupied within a year.

Besides being a pioneer in the industry and bringing the promise of new jobs in Monmouth County, Vonage is also proud of its involvement in the community. Mr. Maloney and Mitchell Slepian, corporate press contact, cited the firm’s participation in the MS Walk of New Jersey and New York and food that has been donated to homeless shelters as just two examples.

For area residents, Vonage sounds like a very good neighbor, indeed.