The aggressive rollout of VoIP services from local cable companies over the past few years has likely caused some growing pains for companies like SunRocket and Vonage. The router-like VoIP devices can be a tad tricky to set up (especially for neophytes) and only being able to use one handset is far less convenient than being able to pick up a phone anywhere in your house. Your cable company, on the other hand, will either send someone out to set up your service and/or flip a switch and let you plug into your existing phone jacks.
As far as pricing is concerned, however, SunRocket has beaten both Vonage and the cable companies handily. If you’re willing to pony up $199, you’ll get unlimited everything for an entire year compared to Vonage’s $24.99/month offering and cable’s $39.99/month average. I have SunRocket’s $9.99/month plan which gives me unlimited incoming minutes and 200 outgoing minutes.
Last Friday, SunRocket laid off about 25 percent of its workforce citing competition as the major reason for the layoffs. The 3-year-old VoIP provider has a little over 200,000 residential subscribers (myself included), many being younger, more price-conscious and tech-saavy consumers.
I don’t think this is the end of SunRocket, not by a long shot. It’s got a great opportunity to surpass Vonage as the leading VoIP carrier in light of Vonage’s legal battles with Verizon and the fact of the matter is that 25% of SunRocket’s workforce is only about 30 people. With 90 people left and a cool $80 million in venture capital back in March of 2005, SunRocket should be okay for the short term.
The biggest challenge that SunRocket is going to face will be how it’s going to survive for the long haul. It needs to differentiate itself enough from the cable companies’ offerings to get subscribers, but that’s a pretty tall order for a company that’s not real big on conventional advertising. Plus, the simple reality is that most people use their cell phones as their main phone lines and those who still keep a landline are made up mostly of old, crotchety baby boomers — hardly SunRocket’s current demographic.
What might benefit SunRocket most is a merger of some type. I use SunRocket for its call forwarding, call blocking, and signature number features — not its phone service. Everything just gets forwarded to my cell phone, I never actually use the phone SunRocket sent to me back when I signed up.
If my current cell provider, Sprint, offered these features, I wouldn’t have to subscribe to SunRocket and I’d gladly pay an extra $10/month towards my Sprint bill. If SunRocket could position itself to get swallowed up by a cell phone company to provide backend account features similar to the ones it offers now, I think it might have a shot at some of that coveted staying power.
Internet-Phone-Service Provider Drops a Fourth of Its Staff [WashingtonPost.com]
Shouldn’t you be using GrandCentral (it’s free!) if this is all you are using SunRocket for? I agree with your essential opinion, however. SunRocket has to find a way to differentiate itself – especially with these bundled deals that the cable companies are now offering and the acquisition of GrandCentral by Google.
Boy oh boy, David, would I love to use GrandCentral.
My problem is that my main number that everybody knows was ported over to SunRocket. I suppose I could forward my SunRocket number to GrandCentral and then forward that number to my cell phone. That’s a lot of forwarding, though, and I’d hate to miss calls if something got clogged up somewhere.
I’m planning to get a GrandCentral number when I move in the next few months and I’ll use it as my main number. I’ll be interested to see how it stacks up against my SunRocket features although from what I’ve read and heard, GrandCentral should make me forget all about the other guys pretty quickly.
Thanks for the comment – nice site, by the way!
I’m on SunRocket’s $199/year plan and have been very pleased with it. I can’t stomach the idea of giving any more money to my cable company (Comcast), though their service is great, so I’m a big fan of SunRocket.
I agree that they don’t have much of a competitive edge, considering that cable companies have such a huge installed user base. Comcast wants $33 a month or something ridiculous like that here (not sure what the add-on cost would be given that I already have cable and internet with them), but they can easily reach their customers with the idea.
I don’t use the line either, except to send the occasional fax, but our housemate does. Otherwise, I’d go with Grand Central or just cell phones. I like having a number I never answer (goes to voicemail, which gets emailed to me as a .wav), so I can put it on forms and never get telemarketing or election calls.
mpingi, a sunrocket rival is offering special offers for exisiting sun rocket customers who can no longer access the sunrocket service because of the company failure. if you are a sunrocket customer, i suggest you check out their offers…check out http://www.1800-info.com/sunrocket/index2.php ive filled the form, waiting for them to get in touch with me…offers seem rather interesting!
I signed up with Lingo. They are now offering a free month of service, free activation, free equipment, and free shipping, as well as a quick port of the SunRocket user’s number over to their service.
I actually ended up doing the same thing, josef jack. So far so good.