It's a tough market for independent VoIP operators, a reality which has just been confirmed by the sudden cessation of SunRocket, the number two standalone VoIP provider behind Vonage. Without apparently notifying customers, the company has suspended operations.
The New York Times broke the news this morning, but the rumors have been swirling for weeks now. SunRocket made this year's Fourth of July a special one for a quarter of its employees when it fired them on July 3. At the time, an executive told the Washington Post, "We're lowering expenses in order to execute our business plan."
"Execute" was certainly an apt word; the company's business plan is now dead. Last week, posters in the forums at Broadband Reports began making unsubstantiated reports that the company was about to go under—and those reports proved to be correct. 197 SunRocket call center workers in Springfield, Missouri were fired yesterday after showing up for work, and not even the call center operator knew what was going on with SunRocket. Most of the company's Virginia workforce also appears to have been let go.
According to the Associated Press, the company is currently being liquidated by Sherwood Partners of California. It's unclear exactly what the company's endgame will look like, as SunRocket has gone down without notifying customers and without posting a message on its web site, which is still up and running.
Back in April, the company was trumpeting the fact that it had broken the 200,000-subscriber milestone. Although signing up this many customers was a notable achievement, it paled in comparison to other operators (including cable companies) that have aggressively marketed "digital phone" products to their customers. Hardly a week goes by when Comcast does not attempt to sell me on the merits of a triple-play of voice, video, and Internet—a combination that VoIP-centric firms like SunRocket couldn't match.
The much-larger Vonage (2.4 million lines) has already swooped in to offer SunRocket customers a deal: they can sign up with Vonage, keep their SunRocket phone number, and get two months of service free.
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