August 6th, 2007
Packet8 CEO: here's how our $199 a year and SunRocket's $199 a year are different
FierceVoIPs Deborah McAdams posts a thorough grok of Packet8 owner 8×8’s recent quarterly conference call. A good bit of the juicy tidbits pertain to the effect of SunRocket’s closing on Packet8.
The big factoid: latest numbers show Pakcet 8 has signed up 19,000 former SunRocket subs.
That’s not necessarily an entirely blessed event, though. Sometimes the best-intended carrying calling plans and welcoming arms provoke questions from stakeholders at the welcoming carrier.
Seems like one of the biggest such doubts can be paraphrased this way- if you, 8×8, are offering a $199 a year plan just like SunRocket did - and SR failed, then how do we know that such deals won’t drag you down?
Bryan Martin, who is chairman and CEO of 8×8, acknowledged this has come up.
“I have even received questions wondering if signing up former SunRocket customers to our standard one year Packet8 plan for $199… will cause 8×8 to start performing like a SunRocket,” Martin said.
Martin then took time to describe that Packet8’s $199 a year Freedom Annual residential plan and SunRocket’s $199 a year residential plan aren’t exactly the same.
“We do charge our normal monthly fees and taxes–e911, Universal Service, regulatory recovery, state and local taxes where applicable–on top of the $199 a year fee. Over the course of a year, these fees add up to a substantial amount of money. SunRocket didn’t do this,” Martin said.
Deborah adds that while SunRocket also issued prorated refunds for anyone canceling service before the end of a year (except for those left stranded). Martin added that Packet8 offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, but no refund after that, Martin said.
In the same conference call 8×8 CFO Dan Weirich added that of the 19,000 now-orphaned SunRocket customers who signed up with Packet8, 61 percent took the one-year, $199 deal.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
