With Skype now in eBay's pocket (see " Skype to eBay: No, we don't accept PayPal") and cable companies gearing up for a major assault on the telecom business, Vonage is undertaking a timely scramble for funding. The nation's largest Internet-telephony company reportedly has hired investment bankers to search out buyers while simultaneously preparing an IPO (see " Vonage mulls VoIPO").  People familiar with the matter tell the Wall Street Journal that Vonage is hoping to raise as much as $600 million or sell itself to a larger company at a price that could top $2 billion.  And at first glance that might seem reasonable. The company has posted a tenfold increase in subscribers since early 2004, and while it seems poised for similar growth in the future, it's far from certain that it will achieve it. Phone and Internet companies who might have once seen a Vonage acquisition as a quick headstart in the Internet telephony market are already rolling out their own such services. Where does this leave Vonage? We'll have to wait and see, but analysts already seem skeptical that anyone would spend several billion dollars to buy it. "I'm having difficulty seeing another network operator buying Vonage," Maribel Lopez, an analyst with Forrester Research, told Barrons. "It's easy to replicate. It's not a service that has incredible barriers to entry. It's risky to assume Vonage will go up against Comcast and Verizon and other low-priced providers like SunRocket and make a significant business out of it. At the end of the day, it's an incredibly challenging business model."