VoIP provider SunRocket has gone out of business. According to ZDNet, email from the Director of Routing and Carrier Services states that “SunRocket will cease operations at COB today,” and furthermore “today is my last day and everyone else you may have worked with at SunRocket…”
If this is truly the shutdown plan — what I call a lifeboat drill, where everyone puts on a life jacket and lines up in the hallway with a copy of their resume — than the implications for the rest of the industry are staggering. Not only will 200,000 customers be left high and dry without service; that’s a problem in and of itself, but one that can be sorted out. I’m thinking of the telephone numbers, an essential business and personal communications asset. If the phone numbers vanish along with SunRocket, any business that relied on SunRocket has been instantly plunged into a communications crisis; you can build a backup plan for a phone outage, but there’s no backup plan for a telephone number that’s been snatched away. Furthermore, if this is truly how SunRocket ends, then I will at the slightest sign of trouble flee my current VoIP provider, lest a failure of the company take my phone number to oblivion.
Numbers are owned by the carriers, not by SunRocket. As such, the numbers themselves should be just fine.
SunRocket was #2 in the all VOIP space, Vonage is #1. Vonage's problems are well documented. Everyone SHOULD be running, not walking, to their cable company and bundling their phone with the cable and high speed.
Numbers are owned by the carriers, not by SunRocket. As such, the numbers themselves should be just fine.
SunRocket was #2 in the all VOIP space, Vonage is #1. Vonage's problems are well documented. Everyone SHOULD be running, not walking, to their cable company and bundling their phone with the cable and high speed.
The rumors have been flying for a few weeks now but I incorrectly assumed Vonage or someone would buy these 200,000 customers.
http://www.tonycode.com/blog/archives/32
I hope I can rescue my number from oblivion.
yeah. i'll go back to the land line before I give Comcast $45 for a VOIP service that costs them $10 to run. So much for competition. :-(
FormerSunrocketEmployee: I may be a bit confused; I assume by this you mean the carriers that are providing local access to the PSTN. Level3 may own the numbers, but SunRocket was controlling them. The telephony industry as a whole continues to resist giving people actual ownership of their telephone numbers, which is going to create an unholy mess in this case.
But regardless, let's assume I'm Joe Consumer. I transfered my number from my local telco monopoly to SunRocket. How the heck do I get it back? I sort of doubt that, e.g., Level3 wants to be bothered with handling 200,000 separate consumer change requests...
The latest info indicates that Level 3 is apparently showing the affected SunRocket numbers to still be active in their systems, even if the customer is experiencing out of service conditions. We are placing orders by the dozens to port customers to our CallVantage service and have been successful in similar scenarios in the past, so we are not anticipating problems in most cases. There may be some backlog due to the sudden high volumes, but that shouldn't prevent successful ports for eligible customers in eligible areas. Our CallVantage sales office number is 866-827-9087.
No service for SunRocket in Southwest Florida but it's apparently still working in New York City and Long Island.
Call your ban credit card/debit card company seeif they can reverse the last charge and cancel your account so they cannot continue charging you for something that does not exist. As it was I lost both home and business communications.
I just found out all this today. I immediately did switch to my Charter bundle. My concern be it SunRocket, Vonage or any of the other independents, they only offer payment by direct billing to your charge account or bank account. I am going tomorrow and getting a new checking acct. Fortunately I was a month to month 200 minute customer. I will only from now on authorize month to month automatic payments through my Billpay at my own bank. I talked to a Vonage employee and they said not to worry we are in great shape. Then I see postings to the contrary. I want to save a buck, but I also want to protect the bucks I already have.
I called the 1-800-786-0132 & 1-877-252-4548 Sunrocket's old phone nos. with the recording "Sunrocket, the No Gotcha Phone Company, we're no longer taking Customer Service or Sales calls. Goodbye" On 7/20/07 I decided to call the above two numbers again and both answered with "Thank you for calling Teleblend, blah, blah." Call again with a different phone number & you'll reach Sunrocket's old recording. They're alternating their outgoing recordings on these lines.
My two SR phone numbers AT&T confirmed were owned by Global Crossing. Others are owned by Level 3 Communications, Inc. etc. which I requested AT&T be ported from Global Crossing and AT&T will call me by the end of this week if they haven't been ported.
I played all kinds of games with Sunrocket/Teleblend this weekend. See my comments on "GigaOM Sunset at Sunrocket? Layoffs rumored written by OM Malik on Friday, June 29, 2007" Go to Google type in Sunrocket and it should be on the first page of google. At the end of his comments section. Two on 7/21 and one on 7/23/07 with the names: Mary, Mary Ann & Mary Ann Bradshaw.
I think you'll get a good laugh about the ported numbers and when they'll turn off our Sunrocket phones permanently. We no longer have voice mail or long distance, of course as Sunrocket never paid their vendors. Be careful though when you call as they see your phone no. on their caller i.d. as you can't block your number when calling 800 or 877 nos.
When I wasn't playing games with their cust. reps. I put their numbers in memory then hit the numbers on my phone so I wouldn't have to keep re-dialing and while holding for a cust. rep. would hang up and re-dial. Sunrocket/Teleblend started calling back on the three lines I was using, but I didn't answer as I could see their number 1-800-786-0132 on my caller i.d. I and two friends have been doing this all week-end so anyone who went with Teleblend may have a problem getting through.
P.S. If Global Crossing doesn't release my phone number to AT&T, even though Teleblend has all of Sunrocket's customer list which has our names, addresses, phone numbers etc. including equpment they claimed they purchased from Sunrocket. God help Global Crossing and Teleblend both as I already have Global Crossing's numbers and will be playing games with both of Global & Teleblend tying up their lines.
Mary Ann, I completely fail to understand why you're doing this.
For those of you who want to save money on phone service, I would suggest signing up with Fonelogic. They are a great company and their customer service beats anyother! For $24.95 a month you get unlimited calls, and for those of you who call international, they have a plan that includes unlimited calls in the US & Canada plus 38 FREE countries for only $29.95! They are currently signing up a lot of SunRocket customers and are able to port numbers also. Their number is 800-560-7535. Thier website is www.fonelogic.com. I've had them for 3 years now and I love it!
I would direct SunRocket customers to Lingo. They are also a reliable VoIP provider, backed by Primus. They are now offering unlimited callings to US and Canada plus free equipment, free shipping, free activation and 30 Day money back guarantee. I think their link is www.lingo.com/sunrocket.
Mary Ann, stop playing games so that the rest of SR folks are
able to get thru. Just dialing Teleblend and making their lines and circuits busy, for no reason, if this is what you really are doing, then it is time to bury this behavior along with SR and
mature... thanks
Well, SR has on their website that all services will be discontinued 8/5/07. Interestingly enough, we still have service, including voicemail and the phone number is coming from the same phone number we had being that ours had not been ported yet. Could someone have put an injunction on SR from discontinuing service for ppl who did not have another service established for safety (911) purposes?
What is also up in the air is for anyone on a prepaid year of service. Will any of that money ever be seen again? It's not enough for most people to write off on taxes as a loss.
All SunRocket(SR) Customer,
I was a SR customer, as I understand that SR played a bankruptcy game to the customer, it looks that they planned this game when they had a promotion for 199/yr plan, they rubbed the balance money on each contract from the customer, TeleBlend(TB) takes over everything from SR except contract, they just changed the company name from SR to TB.
Do you have any idea to handle this issue, it is not a small issue, it is a big,big,big, huge issue, it is related to 200,000 customers
We have to ask government to protect us to have it in fair, where is the government? where is the policeman? where is the lawyer? where is our congressman? did they know the issue or not?
Regards,
A SR Customer
I use Primus backed Lingo VoIP. It works prettily well. Lingo is financially solid and offers unlimited calling plans to over 230 countries. I can recommend Lingo confidently to all SunRocket victims who are interested in getting special promos.
I signed up for Lingo last week. They ported my number from SunRocket this week successfully with no problem.
www.fonelogic.com is all you need, I love this company. Almost everyone I know is using them. I've had them for 2 1/2 years, they are great, and they also accept other forms of payment. Check em out. The reps are super nice and I never have any issues. They have a 30 day money back guarantee, and I think they are giving SR customer a deal. 800-560-7535.