SunRocket Leaves Void for Callers on Internet

johnnymk · 07-25-2007, 01:32 PM

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/23/te...gewanted=print

Waiting for an important phone call can be stressful. As Marshel Emery can attest, it is doubly so when your phone company has just ceased to exist.

Mr. Emery, 33, low on funds and with three children to support, recently applied for jobs at several law enforcement agencies in Tennessee. But his phone service is provided by SunRocket, an Internet telephone company that went out of business without warning last week, leaving its roughly 220,000 customers in the lurch.

Some have no service. Others still do, but like Mr. Emery they have been told that it could be cut off at any moment.

Although SunRocket was tiny by the standards of the telecommunications industry, it has ensured itself a place in the history of the digital era by being the first significant Internet telephone provider to go out of business. Its collapse raises questions about what responsibility such companies have to their customers — and about how they should be regulated, given how essential many people consider phone service to be.

“It’s your lifeline. It’s your food line,” said Mr. Emery, who lives in Lawrenceburg, Tenn. “If you’re going to pull somebody’s phone line, they should know about it.”

The SunRocket meltdown was further complicated because many customers paid $199 upfront for a year of unlimited service, and it is not clear if any of them will receive a refund.

The sudden disappearance of a phone company would have been unthinkable in the past, when telephone service was treated as a veritable unalienable right, like electricity, and being a phone company usually meant owning a physical network of switches, cables and poles.

Standard telephone companies are required to give customers notice if they plan to stop service. But companies like SunRocket that use the infrastructure of the Internet to transmit calls do not have to give such notice. They fall into a bit of a regulatory no man’s land in which they are required to adhere to some traditional requirements, such as building their systems so customers can get 911 service and law enforcement can get easy access to data, but they are free of many other regulations, particularly at the state level.

Many industry analysts and former policy makers said the absence of broad regulations was, to a large extent, desirable because it would allow the emerging Internet phone industry to develop. While these experts said the SunRocket shutdown was clearly a big problem for customers, they said it might not justify a spate of new regulation. One important difference between the current telecommunications era and years past is that most people now have a cellphone as a backup.

The SunRocket shutdown “does point out that there’s some need for either protection or education — I’m not sure which is the right one,” said John Nakahata, former chief of staff for the Federal Communications Commission and now a Washington lawyer focusing on telecommunications.

Mr. Nakahata said the F.C.C. may have its own uncertainty, given that it has not made a clear decision about whether to lump Internet telephone providers in with traditional companies.

“Ultimately, the consumer has to learn to factor in, how stable is this entity I’m entrusting with my phone service?” he added, noting that nevertheless, for SunRocket, “there was a much more socially responsible way to handle this.”

Blair Levin, also a former F.C.C. chief of staff and now a Washington-based telecommunications analyst, agreed that the shutdown was unfortunate but said that policies aimed at increasing competition had made company failures more likely.

There are many small telephone companies like SunRocket that are delivering low-cost voice communications over the Internet. Unlike the large regional Bell companies, these start-ups do not control the lines over which communications are sent, which allows them to be smaller and more nimble but also makes them more susceptible to failure.

“Competition has risk, and the risk of a telco going under increases,” Mr. Levin said. In terms of highlighting these risks, he added, the SunRocket situation “is a little bit of a shot across the bow.”

The SunRocket collapse comes as small Internet phone companies are struggling but as the broader industry is enjoying explosive growth. At the end of March, there were 10.8 million Internet phone subscribers in the United States, nearly double the 5.7 million a year earlier, according to TeleGeography Research, a market research firm.

But cable companies are enjoying the biggest growth in the market. In the first quarter of this year they added 1.1 million subscribers, compared with 255,000 by start-up companies. The biggest stand-alone provider is Vonage, which has about 2.4 million subscribers, but it has faced its own challenges, and a steadily falling stock price, in the face of marketing pressure by the deep-pocketed cable companies.

SunRocket, which was founded in 2004 and had headquarters in Vienna, Va., announced last Tuesday that it had pulled the plug. Earlier there were rumors circulating among industry analysts and journalists, but no concrete warnings. In April, the company announced that it had attracted 200,000 customers.

SunRocket’s chief executive, Lisa Hook, had not answered e-mail messages or phone calls since the collapse. Mayfield Fund, one of the venture capital firms that backed the company, did not respond to an e-mail message seeking comment about whether customers should have been notified earlier.

Martin Pichinson, a partner with Sherwood Partners, which is managing SunRocket’s liquidation, said the company was closed because it did not reach profitability soon enough. He said that helping SunRocket’s customers was his first priority, and that SunRocket was striking deals to move subscribers to other providers of phone service.

A handful of Internet telephone companies have been pursuing SunRocket subscribers, and SunRocket has begun directing customers to two providers, TeleBlend and 8x8, which markets its service under the Packet8 name.

The TeleBlend offer in particular has raised concerns among some former SunRocket customers since TeleBlend appears to be a new company that offers little background information on its Web site, and has a phone number similar to that of SunRocket. Mr. Pichinson did not return a call seeking more information about the company.

The way that SunRocket handled its shutdown enraged many customers, some of whom vented online. Some customers said they were having trouble moving their phone numbers to another service, raising fears that they might lose numbers they had been using for years.

“To think that a company like SunRocket, without any notice or warning, can leave 200,000 customers high and dry is just unacceptable,” Art Tedeschi of DeSoto, Tex., said in an e-mail message last week. “Let’s face it: the demise of SunRocket didn’t just happen between last Friday and today. And the people who knew this was coming should be called in to account for their despicable behavior.”

More broadly, some customers said the biggest lesson of SunRocket was not to pay for service in advance.

“I never again want to give upfront money to corporate America,” said Larry Egan, 68, a retiree who lives outside Orlando, Fla. Already a SunRocket customer for a year, he was charged about $220 (the annual fee plus taxes) last month for a second year of service.

renovation · 07-25-2007, 02:25 PM

little is know about TELEBLEND !
but funny how it just pop up as skyrocket shut it doors ?
Here's the domain info:

Whois

teleblend.net = [ 65.99.5.14 ]

(Asked whois.tucows.com:43 about teleblend.net)

Registrant:
UnCommUn
5 Bragdon Lane
Kennebunk Maine 04043
US
Domain name: TELEBLEND.NET
Administrative Contact:
Fogg Bill bfogg@usacsp.com

5 Bragdon Lane
Kennebunk Maine 04043
US
2074679004
Technical Contact:
Null Dev hostmaster@prexar.com

40 Summer Street
Bangor Maine 04401
US
207-974-4300 Fax: 207-974-4378
Registration Service Provider:
Prexar LLC. hostmaster@prexar.com

1-800-288-5072
207-848-3429 (fax)
»www.prexar.com
Any account modifications (name changes DNS changes renewals etc.)
should be done through Prexar LLC.
Registrar of Record: TUCOWS INC.
Record last updated on 17-Jul-2007.
Record expires on 18-Jul-2008.
Record created on 18-Jul-2007.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS2.PREXAR.COM
NS1.PREXAR.COM
Domain status: clientTransferProhibited
clientUpdateProhibited
The Data in the Tucows Registrar WHOIS database is provided to you by Tucows
for information purposes only and may be used to assist you in obtaining
information about or related to a domain name's registration record.
Tucows makes this information available "as is " and does not guarantee its
accuracy.
By submitting a WHOIS query you agree that you will use this data only for
lawful purposes and that under no circumstances will you use this data to:
a) allow enable or otherwise support the transmission by e-mail
telephone or facsimile of mass unsolicited commercial advertising or
solicitations to entities other than the data recipient's own existing
customers; or (b) enable high volume automated electronic processes that
send queries or data to the systems of any Registry Operator or
ICANN-Accredited registrar except as reasonably necessary to register
domain names or modify existing registrations.
The compilation repackaging dissemination or other use of this Data is
expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Tucows.
Tucows reserves the right to terminate your access to the Tucows WHOIS
database in its sole discretion including without limitation for excessive
querying of the WHOIS database or for failure to otherwise abide by this
policy.
Tucows reserves the right to modify these terms at any time.
By submitting this query you agree to abide by these terms.
NOTE: THE WHOIS DATABASE IS A CONTACT DATABASE ONLY. LACK OF A DOMAIN
RECORD DOES NOT SIGNIFY DOMAIN AVAILABILITY.

(Asked whois.crsnic.net:43 about =teleblend.net) (show)

Whois Server Version 2.0
Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to »www.internic.net
for detailed information.
Domain Name: TELEBLEND.NET
Registrar: TUCOWS INC.
Whois Server: whois.tucows.com
Referral URL: »domainhelp.opensrs.net
Name Server: NS1.PREXAR.COM
Name Server: NS2.PREXAR.COM
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 17-jul-2007
Creation Date: 17-jul-2007
Expiration Date: 17-jul-2008
>>> Last update of whois database: Thu 19 Jul 2007 03: 32: 54 UTC

beatbox32 · 07-25-2007, 02:30 PM

I think this SunRocket ordeal is really going to hurt a lot of VoIP startups. People are most likely willing to stick with the tried & true POTS providers, as costly as they are.

-beatbox32

redcolours · 07-28-2007, 09:09 AM

woohoo wohoohoo!

07-25-2007, 01:32 PM	#1
johnnymk Chief of Naval Operations Join Date: May 2000 Location: LEVITTOWN< PA> USA Posts: 13,621	SunRocket Leaves Void for Callers on Internet http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/23/te...gewanted=print Waiting for an important phone call can be stressful. As Marshel Emery can attest, it is doubly so when your phone company has just ceased to exist. Mr. Emery, 33, low on funds and with three children to support, recently applied for jobs at several law enforcement agencies in Tennessee. But his phone service is provided by SunRocket, an Internet telephone company that went out of business without warning last week, leaving its roughly 220,000 customers in the lurch. Some have no service. Others still do, but like Mr. Emery they have been told that it could be cut off at any moment. Although SunRocket was tiny by the standards of the telecommunications industry, it has ensured itself a place in the history of the digital era by being the first significant Internet telephone provider to go out of business. Its collapse raises questions about what responsibility such companies have to their customers — and about how they should be regulated, given how essential many people consider phone service to be. “It’s your lifeline. It’s your food line,” said Mr. Emery, who lives in Lawrenceburg, Tenn. “If you’re going to pull somebody’s phone line, they should know about it.” The SunRocket meltdown was further complicated because many customers paid $199 upfront for a year of unlimited service, and it is not clear if any of them will receive a refund. The sudden disappearance of a phone company would have been unthinkable in the past, when telephone service was treated as a veritable unalienable right, like electricity, and being a phone company usually meant owning a physical network of switches, cables and poles. Standard telephone companies are required to give customers notice if they plan to stop service. But companies like SunRocket that use the infrastructure of the Internet to transmit calls do not have to give such notice. They fall into a bit of a regulatory no man’s land in which they are required to adhere to some traditional requirements, such as building their systems so customers can get 911 service and law enforcement can get easy access to data, but they are free of many other regulations, particularly at the state level. Many industry analysts and former policy makers said the absence of broad regulations was, to a large extent, desirable because it would allow the emerging Internet phone industry to develop. While these experts said the SunRocket shutdown was clearly a big problem for customers, they said it might not justify a spate of new regulation. One important difference between the current telecommunications era and years past is that most people now have a cellphone as a backup. The SunRocket shutdown “does point out that there’s some need for either protection or education — I’m not sure which is the right one,” said John Nakahata, former chief of staff for the Federal Communications Commission and now a Washington lawyer focusing on telecommunications. Mr. Nakahata said the F.C.C. may have its own uncertainty, given that it has not made a clear decision about whether to lump Internet telephone providers in with traditional companies. “Ultimately, the consumer has to learn to factor in, how stable is this entity I’m entrusting with my phone service?” he added, noting that nevertheless, for SunRocket, “there was a much more socially responsible way to handle this.” Blair Levin, also a former F.C.C. chief of staff and now a Washington-based telecommunications analyst, agreed that the shutdown was unfortunate but said that policies aimed at increasing competition had made company failures more likely. There are many small telephone companies like SunRocket that are delivering low-cost voice communications over the Internet. Unlike the large regional Bell companies, these start-ups do not control the lines over which communications are sent, which allows them to be smaller and more nimble but also makes them more susceptible to failure. “Competition has risk, and the risk of a telco going under increases,” Mr. Levin said. In terms of highlighting these risks, he added, the SunRocket situation “is a little bit of a shot across the bow.” The SunRocket collapse comes as small Internet phone companies are struggling but as the broader industry is enjoying explosive growth. At the end of March, there were 10.8 million Internet phone subscribers in the United States, nearly double the 5.7 million a year earlier, according to TeleGeography Research, a market research firm. But cable companies are enjoying the biggest growth in the market. In the first quarter of this year they added 1.1 million subscribers, compared with 255,000 by start-up companies. The biggest stand-alone provider is Vonage, which has about 2.4 million subscribers, but it has faced its own challenges, and a steadily falling stock price, in the face of marketing pressure by the deep-pocketed cable companies. SunRocket, which was founded in 2004 and had headquarters in Vienna, Va., announced last Tuesday that it had pulled the plug. Earlier there were rumors circulating among industry analysts and journalists, but no concrete warnings. In April, the company announced that it had attracted 200,000 customers. SunRocket’s chief executive, Lisa Hook, had not answered e-mail messages or phone calls since the collapse. Mayfield Fund, one of the venture capital firms that backed the company, did not respond to an e-mail message seeking comment about whether customers should have been notified earlier. Martin Pichinson, a partner with Sherwood Partners, which is managing SunRocket’s liquidation, said the company was closed because it did not reach profitability soon enough. He said that helping SunRocket’s customers was his first priority, and that SunRocket was striking deals to move subscribers to other providers of phone service. A handful of Internet telephone companies have been pursuing SunRocket subscribers, and SunRocket has begun directing customers to two providers, TeleBlend and 8x8, which markets its service under the Packet8 name. The TeleBlend offer in particular has raised concerns among some former SunRocket customers since TeleBlend appears to be a new company that offers little background information on its Web site, and has a phone number similar to that of SunRocket. Mr. Pichinson did not return a call seeking more information about the company. The way that SunRocket handled its shutdown enraged many customers, some of whom vented online. Some customers said they were having trouble moving their phone numbers to another service, raising fears that they might lose numbers they had been using for years. “To think that a company like SunRocket, without any notice or warning, can leave 200,000 customers high and dry is just unacceptable,” Art Tedeschi of DeSoto, Tex., said in an e-mail message last week. “Let’s face it: the demise of SunRocket didn’t just happen between last Friday and today. And the people who knew this was coming should be called in to account for their despicable behavior.” More broadly, some customers said the biggest lesson of SunRocket was not to pay for service in advance. “I never again want to give upfront money to corporate America,” said Larry Egan, 68, a retiree who lives outside Orlando, Fla. Already a SunRocket customer for a year, he was charged about $220 (the annual fee plus taxes) last month for a second year of service.

07-25-2007, 02:25 PM	#2
renovation Admiral Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: You could pick up Lindsay Lohan for less than a intel 990x, and still have money left over to bail her outta jail Posts: 5,029	little is know about TELEBLEND ! but funny how it just pop up as skyrocket shut it doors ? Here's the domain info: Whois teleblend.net = [ 65.99.5.14 ] (Asked whois.tucows.com:43 about teleblend.net) Registrant: UnCommUn 5 Bragdon Lane Kennebunk Maine 04043 US Domain name: TELEBLEND.NET Administrative Contact: Fogg Bill bfogg@usacsp.com 5 Bragdon Lane Kennebunk Maine 04043 US 2074679004 Technical Contact: Null Dev hostmaster@prexar.com 40 Summer Street Bangor Maine 04401 US 207-974-4300 Fax: 207-974-4378 Registration Service Provider: Prexar LLC. hostmaster@prexar.com 1-800-288-5072 207-848-3429 (fax) »www.prexar.com Any account modifications (name changes DNS changes renewals etc.) should be done through Prexar LLC. Registrar of Record: TUCOWS INC. Record last updated on 17-Jul-2007. Record expires on 18-Jul-2008. Record created on 18-Jul-2007. Domain servers in listed order: NS2.PREXAR.COM NS1.PREXAR.COM Domain status: clientTransferProhibited clientUpdateProhibited The Data in the Tucows Registrar WHOIS database is provided to you by Tucows for information purposes only and may be used to assist you in obtaining information about or related to a domain name's registration record. Tucows makes this information available "as is " and does not guarantee its accuracy. By submitting a WHOIS query you agree that you will use this data only for lawful purposes and that under no circumstances will you use this data to: a) allow enable or otherwise support the transmission by e-mail telephone or facsimile of mass unsolicited commercial advertising or solicitations to entities other than the data recipient's own existing customers; or (b) enable high volume automated electronic processes that send queries or data to the systems of any Registry Operator or ICANN-Accredited registrar except as reasonably necessary to register domain names or modify existing registrations. The compilation repackaging dissemination or other use of this Data is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Tucows. Tucows reserves the right to terminate your access to the Tucows WHOIS database in its sole discretion including without limitation for excessive querying of the WHOIS database or for failure to otherwise abide by this policy. Tucows reserves the right to modify these terms at any time. By submitting this query you agree to abide by these terms. NOTE: THE WHOIS DATABASE IS A CONTACT DATABASE ONLY. LACK OF A DOMAIN RECORD DOES NOT SIGNIFY DOMAIN AVAILABILITY. (Asked whois.crsnic.net:43 about =teleblend.net) (show) Whois Server Version 2.0 Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to »www.internic.net for detailed information. Domain Name: TELEBLEND.NET Registrar: TUCOWS INC. Whois Server: whois.tucows.com Referral URL: »domainhelp.opensrs.net Name Server: NS1.PREXAR.COM Name Server: NS2.PREXAR.COM Status: clientTransferProhibited Status: clientUpdateProhibited Updated Date: 17-jul-2007 Creation Date: 17-jul-2007 Expiration Date: 17-jul-2008 >>> Last update of whois database: Thu 19 Jul 2007 03: 32: 54 UTC __________________ You could pick up Lindsay Lohan for less than a intel 990x, and still have money left over to bail her outta jail

07-25-2007, 02:30 PM	#3
beatbox32 Lieutenant Junior Grade Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Orange County, CA, USA Posts: 159	I think this SunRocket ordeal is really going to hurt a lot of VoIP startups. People are most likely willing to stick with the tried & true POTS providers, as costly as they are. -beatbox32 __________________ -beatbox32 "Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out." - Atlas Shrugged

07-28-2007, 09:09 AM	#4
redcolours in living colour Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: above a raging c Posts: 1,739	woohoo wohoohoo! __________________ there are pictures, but no,nothing happens on my site.

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