March 23 (Bloomberg) -- Vonage Holdings Corp. was ordered by a judge to stop using Verizon Communications Inc. technology that lets customers make calls to standard phone lines, threatening the money-losing Internet phone company's survival.

U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton approved a Verizon request that may cripple the service today, sending Vonage shares to a record low. Hilton, in Alexandria, Virginia, said he won't sign the order before a hearing in two weeks on Vonage's request for a stay. A jury found March 8 that Vonage infringed three patents and said it should pay Verizon $58 million.

``My impression is they have to shut down'' if Vonage can't develop a way to link calls that replaces the one that violates Verizon's patents, said Clayton Moran, an analyst with Stanford Group in Boca Raton, Florida, who covers Vonage. ``That's obviously disastrous.''

Vonage, based in Holmdel, New Jersey, said it is developing ``technical workarounds'' to avoid infringing Verizon's patents. New York-based Verizon sued Vonage in June, claiming it lured away more than 1 million Verizon customers by copying voicemail and other services, as well as a method for interpreting so- called Voice over Internet Protocol calls so they can be heard over traditional phone lines.

Shares of Vonage fell $1.05, or 26 percent, to $3 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, the lowest closing price since they were sold to the public in May. About 9.78 million changed hands, almost nine times the three-month daily average. The decline cut the company's market value to $464.8 million.

By Jeff St.Onge and Amy Thomson