SunRocket is now Pluto

It appears that SunRocket was indeed acquired and with it the vast majority of the remaining employees unceremoniously laid off sans a small group of 15-20 of the folks necessary to keep the network alive. SunRocket network suppliers were notified late Friday so they wouldn't turn them off.

With 200k subscribers and say a $40m revenue base, if they simply stop marketing, give crappy customer support and run it on a shoestring -- it's a nice little pocket business. Playing in the fringes.

In hindsight, it was kinda of crazy to spend $200+ to acquire a customer whose annual spend was only $200+. Hard to outrun the economics. The hopes, of course, was that if you reached a decent size, people would come to you and you could reduce your marketing costs. Vonage certainly hasn't seen this, so SunRocket wasn't going to be much better.

Customer service cost also can eat you alive. Anytime you call for customer service, figure it's costing that company between $0.75 and $1.00 PER MINUTE to talk to you. For a typical 10 minute call that's $8-10. Call twice in a month and for a SunRocket $17 a month revenue, they lost money on you. It's also amazing the number of people who buy cheap are also the same group who complain constantly. They want it all and they're willing to bitch about it.

Sprint's decision to whack 1000 customers who were constantly calling customer support (I suspect their initial list had 10k names on it) is wise. Perhaps, SunRocket simply should not have had telephony support at all and just offered email support.

Some folks have just crappy internet service and SunRocket was never going to fix that. Perhaps after 3 customer support calls, SunRocket should have pro-actively canceled the customer's account. Why keep a customer that will never be happy?

Perhaps rather than being a nationwide telephone service, SunRocket should have focused on a specific region or vertical consumer group. Better targeting their marketing spend and creating a reputation in a specific niche.

VC's are an inpatient lot. They give a start-up money and urge them to spend it as fast as possible and grow as quickly as they can. In doing that, the start-up makes mistakes, does stupid things, hires the wrong people, it's a wild ride for sure. VC's don't mind failures, that's the business they're in, but if it's going to fail, they want it fail fast so they can move on to the next hot idea. SunRocket had to build a complete telephone company literally overnight with hundreds of moving parts so it's not surprising mistakes were made.

The genesis of the idea of SunRocket is still valid, create something different that people will be loyal to and ultimately becomes virally marketed. But by buying off the shelf VoIP and traditional telecom products the ability to differentiate the service, other than with a pricing model, was nil. You can't buy innovation in a catalog.

Comments

[Rob]

So....how do you figure SR was acquired by Pluto? Any links?

[Nathan]

With Sunrocket having shut down, I wanted to mention that myphonecompany is still alive and kicking. They have a promotion where you get the fourth month free with agent sign up... and they also have a plan called mydevice that allows you to use your existing equipment and myphonecompany service for a lower fee. They also have an expanded international calling radius. To find out more, go to the agent site at www.rip2p.com and click the sign up link to be redirected to their site to sign up and receive your fourth month free! You can even port your existing SunRocket Number to myphonecompany for FREE! MyPhoneCompany requires 911 service on your account due to new FCC regulations. It costs a one time $15.00 activation fee, and is an additional $1.50 per month. This surcharge will appear on any and all VOIP services due to the new FCC Regulations.

[Piter]

Actually, ViaTalk is offering a contract buyout for SunRocket customers. They have unlimited plan with TWO phone lines for only $199 a year, that's ~$16 a month. More details at this link:
http://www.anrdoezrs.net/da74c-7w36LNORUMQOLNMQNMUST

[Jeff Hiester]

wow, the sunrocket is down huh. well dont fret mylowphone is here to pick up the slack! same old story, cheap monthly price and all the bells and whistles. Great customer service. www.mylowphone.com

[ricci mathew]

SunRocket has locked its doors and pointed its customers to sign up with Teleblend or Packet8. But, I don’t want go with them. I am planning to sign up with Lingo. One of my friends told me about his experience with the Lingo service. He has no problems in making calls to his friends in Western Europe and Australia. Moreover, he also remembered me that Lingo has great promos for former SunRocket customers like me.

[CarylRaeKrannich@gmail.com]

After SunRocket’s sad end, next thing is to sign up with some other VoIP provider. I prefer to go with Lingo because they are financially solid and have several attractive local and international calling plans suitable for both home and business users. Their calling plans such as Small Talk, Chatter Box, Talk 365 Plan and Global Gabber for residential users seems to be great for making phone calls at reasonable rates.

[Runkel]

With Sunrocket long gone, I would look into vsgi.com/voip. The company has been in business since 1988, so no worries of the company dissolving.