July 24th, 2007
SunRocket had a "cheap product and couldn't compete," Vonage spokesperson boasts
While expressing often-offered analyst opinions that SunRocket’s failure shows the competitive odds stand-alone VoIP providers are up against, Ryan Kim’s article today in the San Francisco Chronicle has an interesting quote from a Vonage spokesperson.
Noting that Vonage picked up some 11,000 new subscribers in the two days (last Tuesday and Wednesday) following SunRocket’s demise, Vonage spokesperson Charles Sahner couldn’t resist dancing on the grave just a little bit:
“We were the leader from the very beginning and we have that critical mass and the scale,” Sahner said. “We helped put (SunRocket) out of business. They had a cheap product and they couldn’t compete.”
Kim adds that Sahner said SunRocket failed because it couldn’t meet its customer’s needs for better features and strong customer support.
Maybe that’s a bit more aggressive a tone than we usually hear from p.r. people, but Sahner also said Vonage did experience double call volumes during that same Tuesday and Wednesday of last week.
I wonder whether those call volume spikes were new Vonage customers testing out their lines, and calling family, friends and colleagues to tell them that yes, I am still online but with a new provider.
And I am thinking some of these folks decided to get new phone numbers as well.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
