VoIP Reviews

If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. That’s a good rule to follow in life. Countless people in the world are frauded out of what many estimate to be billions of dollars every year. With VoIP provider SunRocket, many purchased one year, hoping to get a second year free, in the cutthroat Voice over IP industry.

It was not to be with SunRocket. How could one of the fastest growing VoIP services disappear almost overnight? The answer lies not only with SunRocket, but with their competitor Vonage.

Vonage dominated the VoIP market early on, taking out massive debt in order to finance a super aggressive marketing campaign led by CEO Jeffrey Citron, who was fined by the SEC during a securities fraud investigation and banned from the industry. The hype created around Vonage allowed them to gather enough customers to earn the ability to take out even more debt. The massive amount of marketing allowed Vonage to not only take a sizeable lead in the market, but to earn the ire of the big telcos as well. Soon the traditional landline telephone providers were not to be outdone, and would enter the market.

Confronted both with trying to vie for attention away from the colossal Vonage service and the entry of companies like AT&T, TimeWarner, Verizon and others into the VoIP market, SunRocket simply couldn’t compete on the marketing front.

So SunRocket resorted to desperation. SunRocket continually cut prices in a big to woo over the price savvy crowd. Eventually, SunRocket stooped giving away a free year of service when customers purchased one. The hope was that it would earn enough attention to increase their subscriber base, which was predicted by many analysts to stay with the same service for a long time to come.

It may have worked at first, however, with SunRocket, as with any VoIP service, the beginning is rocky, and there were a few outages, perhaps a few customers leaving. Suddenly, the next year, in which a majority of SunRocket’s subscribers would most likely pay nothing for the service, was not looking so good.

The profitable decision when faced with a bleak future without any incoming money for the next year was then made: SunRocket would go bankrupt, and sell off their subscriber base to the highest bidder.

In conclusion, the reason for SunRocket’s collapse was SunRocket’s attempts to match the pace of Vonage’s growth. Vonage itself nearly faced collapse under the massive debt it incurred from it’s over-the-top and reckless level of advertising. The tremendous hype and subsequent loss of customers at a rapid pace lead to the big telecom companies fearing Vonage’s offerings and entering the market for themselves. In all, the VoIP industry as a whole would of significantly benefited from a more fiscally responsible approach on the part of their management, and their customers benefited from not having the services they paid for ending due to bankruptcy.

Vonage was king of VoIP. For a time. By introducing aggressive marketing campaigns, the airwaves were abuzz with Vonage ads. Vonage marketed so frequently and with such an overwhelming ferocity that VoIP almost became synonymous with Vonage.

Yet it was not to be, eventually Vonage would lose out to other competitors, not from within the local VoIP start-ups themselves, but from external threats: the big telephone companies themselves. Not to be outdone and lose all of their customers to the new growing Voice over IP market, the big telcos decided to follow the old slogan “if you can’t beat them, join them” and take on the VoIP market proactively. Their tremendous successes in cutting into the VoIP market were still not enough to declare Vonage out of the race, at first.

But Vonage over-marketed perhaps. After spending millions upon millions on marketing, Vonage was left with a massive debt. Despite all this, it seems Vonage was confident in it’s potential earnings and began to launch an IPO. The IPO first skyrocketed. That victory was to be short-lived. Vonage’s new IPO failed mostly due to the massive debts Vonage was facing. Perhaps had Vonage adopted a more slow but steady approach, their earnings may have been better. The big telcos might of not gotten involved as quickly if they did not feel there was a threat. The constant Vonage bombardment and hype may have scared the telcos to prematurely enter the VoIP market and further destroy the debt-ridden Vonage’s chances.

Then there’s Jeffrey Citron, CEO of Vonage, who was fined $29.2 million and banned from the securities industry in a fraud case. With such a tarnished past, and the suspicious way the company was run, this has caused many to speculate if an ambitious enough CEO would not just plan out this entire ordeal in advance. It’s simple enough, invest in a start-up, hype up the product with an overly aggressive marketing campaign, launch an IPO, and cash out. One can hope prosecution follows, but it may be hard to prove any criminal negligence in this situation. In Vonage’s case, perhaps the public may never know, or perhaps it really was all just an overly ambitious venture gone wrong.

All in all, the Voice over IP market may have started premature. Many VoIP services experienced rocky starts that led many customer exoduses. The pricing and over factors could have been greatly improved with the right circumstances. As with all things in life, perhaps slow and steady would have won the race for Vonage.

Vonage came on early on into the Voice over IP market. With a combined strategy of over-aggressive marketing and crafty promotional methods, Vonage took control of the VoIP industry.

Simply put, Vonage hyped up their product, which earned them some modest number of subscribers, which gave them the ability to secure even more loans to advertise their products even more aggressively. A cycle of borrowing money to advertise services which then grew larger and then gave them the ability to borrow more money and repeat the cycle.

Beating out competitors such as SunRocket, Vonage left no room for the other VoIP services to breathe, squashing them out very quickly. The competitors were forced to drastic measures, promising ridiculously low amounts in order to try and win over some customers. SunRocket, for example, resorted to offering one year free when customers bought buy one year in advance. Of course, these types of promises lead to inprofitability for Vonage’s competitors. SunRocket would collapse under the pressure of the year that was ahead of them, in which a majority of customers would have already paid for service and get the next year free. This led the second place competitor to collapse.

Eventually Vonage grew to become a behemoth, with millions of customers but also with the largest amount of debt in the industry by far and to an unsustainable point. The founder Jeffrey Citron was also the subject of a securities fraud investigation. It is amazing how little attention has been brought onto this fact, either in the media or within the VoIP industry. The combined practices of Datek Securities, Citron’s former company, and Vonage seem to outline what appears to be a consistently fraudulent behavioral pattern. The SEC filed suit against Citron’s Datek Securities Corporation, and claimed this in their filing

“By fraudulent means, defendants Sheldon Maschler, Citron, McCarty, Erik Maschler, and Heartland used the SOES system to execute millions of proprietary trades, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in illegal profits. The great majority of these profits were paid to Sheldon Maschler and Citron, but other defendants profited as well. The fraudulent scheme was carefully planned and orchestrated, and was concealed from regulators through the use of sophisticated software, the creation of nominee accounts and fictitious books and records, and the filing of false reports with the Commission.”

Jeffrey Citron agreed to pay $29.2 million in fines, which is a sort of tacit omission of guilt. He was subsequently banned from the industry forever. Fast forward a decade, and Jeffrey proceeds to hype up his new Vonage company, which then proceeds to over market their product acquiring massive debt, and hype up an IPO which rises quickly, only to have it’s value collapse under the mountain of debt facing the company.

This is our first brand new post from VoIP Judge. We’ve moved over from a different CMS system to this easier layout. We may re-post some content from the earlier website, but after that we’ll focus on putting out inportant news and reviews from the VoIP industry. Many may think this industry is on the way down, but we disagree, and think the industry is a mere fledgling of the potential it could have, and will require further adaptation and advances to branch out and take control of global communications. Perhaps a merger of VoIP and satellite technology, or some other creative idea could launch this industry to take over the markets for cellular and landline systems, currently the only way to use a cellular VoIP phone is to purchase an unlimited data plan from your cellular provider, but this defeats the purpose of VoIP for many people prefer the substantial money saving aspects of the Voice over IP industry.

Edit: Transferring this from the old site, I wrote this a while back, before SunRocket went bankrupt. Truly a sad day for the industry. They were my preferred VoIP service. Trying to compete with Vonage’s overly aggressive marketing was their undoing.

SunRocket is one of the biggest names in the VoIP industry. SunRocket has pretty good customer service, that handles all SunRocket complaints fairly well. Recently, SunRocket customer service that has been more highly praised. With their size rapidly increasing, expect to see greater area code availability. SunRocket now has coverage of most major metropolitan areas.

SunRocket’s international rates are practically speaking, the best. SunRocket actually gives a $3.00 credit for international calls every month! Then to top it off, they have “SunRocket Sunspots”, varying countries that are 3 cents or less a minute. Using that $3.00 credit you can call the SunRocket Sunspots for 100 minutes a month for free!

Another great bonus, is that SunRocket includes a second phone number, absolutely free. Other companies charge usually around $5-$10 a month for that second number. That means you can have one SunRocket phone number where you live, and another SunRocket number at a destination of your choice, allowing your friends or relatives to call you locally, even if they are states away.

SunRocket also has many convenient features, the most notable of which is a distinctive ring service, that allows you to know which phone line is being called. Other notable SunRocket features include free 3-way calling, caller ID, and even a call waiting ID so you can see who the second caller is. Think about that, for a moment: you can actually see who is on the other line without having to switch over! That can be very convenient to avoid marketers or unwanted calls.

One other innovative feature SunRocket also has, is called “Find Me”, if you enable the handy feature, assuming you use multiple phones: if a phone call doesn’t get you at one location, it will cycle to the other locations until it reaches you. SunRocket forwards the call to any other phone number, even non-SunRocket numbers! So if you can’t reach your SunRocket phone, it could forward the call to your cell-phone! Think about just how handy that can be! If you run a business, or wish to use more than one phone line, it can be infinitely helpful! SunRocket’s innovation simply knows no bounds.

Most importantly of all, SunRocket has a price that is hard to beat, with their special “$199 a year” promotion, add that to their sweet promotions like two free Uniden cordless phones. SunRocket has no activation fees, either, and SunRocket’s contract is quoted by many individuals as the easiest to cancel contract in the industry. SunRocket’s price is truly the lowest, as SunRocket has a “no hidden fees” guarantee, and their upfront price always includes taxes and fees. Those fees can add up! SunRocket takes the blindfold away from your eyes and lets you know what you can expect.

Our SunRocket review won’t leave out one other important fact: SunRocket has, nearly undisputably, the easiest contract to cancel in the VoIP industry. If you were to compare SunRocket with other VoIP companies, that factor may be crucial.

SunRocket is a company that has great prices, great service, and there is a very high rate of satisfaction among SunRocket customers. Almost every SunRocket comparison lists them as one of the best.

When we compare SunRocket with other VoIP companies, we find few equals. The SunRocket price is amazing! SunRocket complaints are few, and the SunRocket promotions are the best. Two free Uniden phones on an amazing $199 a year plan is simply unrivaled. The free Uniden phones themselves are worth half the plan! They’re nice phones but if you don’t want the phones, you could give them away and get a tax-write off for about $100. That’s what I did.