News coming from SunRocket inside is sketchy. What's clear is Lisa Hook, the really great CEO (sic), resigned last Thursday and was in her office yesterday cleaning it out. Like a Ship Captain, usually the CEO stays until the lights go out. Whether the Board asked her to just leave "you've done enough, honey" or she chickened out "I have a nail appointment" isn't yet clear.
Telephone numbers going out of service. Inbound numbers disappearing. Outbound calls not connecting. Customer calls not being answered. Everyone running around asking questions. I mean it would have been obvious months ago that the company was no longer a "going concern". Prudent at that point would have been the orderly shutdown of the business. Notification to customers, suppliers and employees. You might still have had to screw over all of these stakeholders, but you'd done it with dignity. Lisa can clearly blame (and did) the founding team for a "bad" business idea perhaps, but she carries the title of simply being a "bad" manager. The weight is on her shoulder for this disaster.
Now what? Well it's just beginning. This is clearly NOT what the VoIP industry needs. Customer's will lose their telephone numbers. Someone is going to call 911 and not get connected. Credit card companies will get called. The NYTimes, CNN and local TV stations are all going to air this disaster. It's 200,000 customers, a drop in the bucket of 500 million telephone numbers in use in the United States, but 200,000 is still a big number.
Verizon is at this hour at some swank lunch place in downtown DC with political beasts from the FCC saying, "we told you this would happen". This industry needs to be regulated! Two guys and a pick-up truck shouldn't be allowed to simply become a telephone company without proper oversight. Maybe the VoIP industry needs a tax to pay for an insurance pool for just this sort of problem (sic). Vonage should have stepped in and bought the SunRocket assets, this is going to only negatively impact them. Level3 and Global Crossing as well as XO Communications will get hell as well. How could they allow a SunRocket to go under? Since in fact, they provide the inbound telephone numbers and for the most part handle the outbound telephone calls.
No dear friends. This story is only just beginning. The fallout from this disaster is going to be the circle of discussion for months in various groups and it's nothing but bad news for VoIP players. God help anyone who comes up with a creative idea, now they're going to have to battle the poor customer service image left by SunRocket.
The good news in all of this though, I only need watch where Lisa Hook shows up next to find my next stock to short.
Rock on Cranky!
Posted by: Jamie | July 17, 2007 at 01:19 PM
"Two guys and a pick-up truck shouldn't be allowed to simply become a telephone company without proper oversight." is classic. LOL
Posted by: Kenya | July 17, 2007 at 05:10 PM
Good idea about shorting the stock of whatever company hires Lisa Hook...
Posted by: Robert | July 18, 2007 at 06:56 AM
Good idea about shorting the stock of whatever company hires Lisa Hook...
Posted by: Robert | July 18, 2007 at 06:56 AM