VoIP News July 24, 2007

Recent news in the IP communications space has centered on SunRocket replacements from companies like Nuvio and OneSuite. At least in the case of OneSuite, I haven’t even heard of them and their PR/marketing is nonexistent… At least to me. I think switching from SunRocket to OneSuite may be a mistake as I have never heard of the company till now. They do have an ISO 9001:2000 certification but this means little to me as it doesn’t apply to VoIP quality or financial stability. What about the PR, articles, branding and marketing?
 
Perhaps I am just having a personal backlash towards SunRocket but it is apparent if a company spends little of its time branding, they could be in trouble. Especially if they are consumer facing. This is exactly what happened to SunRocket in fact. Sure it is more complicated than that but when your outward presence goes dark, eventually so do your lights. There is also the fact the market leader, Vonage decided to pursue a business model which is devoid of profit. A model which keeps pushing cheaper and cheaper phone calls.
 
While the SunRocket demise may be good for Vonage from a competitive standpoint it is less than stellar from an investment point of view. Vonage priced their service too low and now they are paying the price. Furthermore they focused primarily on cost instead of service or features.
 
Getting back to OneSuite, I do like the company’s MessageOne service but at $1/month for fax and voicemail to e-mail one wonders how they make money. Wouldn’t it be better to charge $9.95/month and just have a few month special at this low price? I don’t know this company’s financials but again, I am leery after what we witnessed with SunRocket.
 
Speaking of free calls, one company doing a great job of connecting businesses via Skype is VoSKY and they have recently announced they interoperate with ShoreTel. In case anyone is interested, both VoSky and ShoreTel deserve an A for their marketing and branding. This is not ever a sure sign of success but it helps.
 
Heading to the SMB space, SIP PBX player Zultys has just announced they have a new VP of Sales and Marketing and a new price list.
  
One last bit of news worth reading is the 30% growth rate of VoIP in China and a Rates Technology/Qwest VoIP lawsuit.

  • Robert Wolpov
    July 25, 2007 at 11:15 am

    Hi Rich. I thought I might throw my company, Junction Networks, into the mix. We too are slightly under the radar with our hosted pbx service. Personally, I think the SunRocket demise is bad for the whole industry. There are a lot of VoIP naysayers out there and the SunRocket news is only fuel for the fire.

  • Terry Keegan
    July 25, 2007 at 12:43 pm

    For many years my friends, relatives and I have used the standard OneSuite. The online, in time, record of your calls and expenses is very handy. Other features, no direct taxes etc. etc. are invaluable. To the best of my knowledge this service has been great for everyone. Years ago I learned of it from a tech writer at a large Rhode Island newspaper; he wrote on such topics.

  • Anthony
    July 26, 2007 at 2:30 am

    I’ve been a Onesuite.com customer for many years until late last year when I decided to sign up with SunRocket and go voip all the way dropping my land line too. I was thinking of saving some $$$ by dropping my land line and for 6 months or so it went well aside from bad voice quality every now and then but its quite tolerable.
    Now I think I made a mistake. SunRocket is my sole telephone service and I missed some business opportunities because of its demise (without warning). Now back to your topic Onesuite, I think they’ve been around for about 6 or 7 years but their main market is prepaid long distance service with additional features like Message One and just very recently (I didn’t know until 2 days ago) they also added VOIP feature. I re-signed up with Onesuite.com and by next week I’ll get a land line. I think by going back to landline and Onesuite will give me a peace of mind and save on my long distance cost at the same time.
    Lesson learned for me.
    I will never rely on VOIP service alone and I am not going to pre pay $200 for a 12 month subscription.

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