July 19th, 2007
SunRocket creditors announce two preferred providers: Vonage takes big hit
As has been rumored ever since SunRocket went belly up Monday, their creditors have signed deals with former SR competitors 8×8 and Unified Communications Corp. to be “preferred service providers” for SR’s 200,000 orphaned customers.
The deal has to be good for 8×8, and its Packet 8 service. Normal start up costs of slightly more than $100 are waives as part of the deal, and existing SR numbers will be ported over.
Unified Communications Teleblend service will offer SunRocket customers a $12.95 a month rate for the duration of their SR contract.
But what about Vonage? Although Vonage is offering deals to former SunRocket customers, the fact that SunRocket’s deals are with two Vonage competitors could be seen by Vonage investors as missed opportunities.
Missed opportunities that coulda shoulda wudda added tens of thousands of new Vonage subs at a time when the struggling pure-play VoIP really needs it.
But notice what happened to Vonage stock today? Look at the top of this post. Down 17 cents, -5.78%.
One more thing: can you believe that even after these deals were announced, the cheery SunRocket home page- offers and all- is, STILL UP? Update: The SunRocket home page was finally updated this afternoon with a notice about the provider’s closure. Despite this refresh, all of the other service-related internal pages are still up and appear as they were before the shutdown. Don’t you think that would be a natural place to announce these deals with Packet8 and Teleblend?
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
