SunRocket orphans punk'd

The fallout continues from the death of SunRocket, the Vienna, Va., consumer VoIP company that flamed out in mid-July and left 200,000 customers hunting for a new provider. The potential to poach customers led to a raft of outreach by indie VoIP companies that may or may not have been prepared to handle the influx.

Packet8 of Santa Clara, Calif., and TeleBlend of Oakland, Calif., officially stepped into the SunRocket void through liquidation deals. TeleBlend was formed for the purpose by USA Telephone of Kennebunk, Maine, and offered service at $12.95 a month for the time remaining on defunct one-year SunRocket contracts.

Last week, nearly everyone writing about voice service of any kind received an email from Marc Kruskol, a public relations professional in Van Nuys, Calif., who was seriously peeved with TeleBlend over a two-day network outage. TeleBlend blamed Global Crossing, then quickly took it back. Gary Kim of IP Business said the service disruptions were not network related, but rather a function of SunRocket creditors with no interest in playing ball with TeleBlend.

ViaTalk of Clifton Park, NY, is also having its share of SunRocket difficulties. Posters at the DSLReports ViaTalk forum have reported service call wait times of up to three hours as well as disruptions and various other complaints. Todd Clark, a student at Chemeketa Community College of Salem, Ore., said he signed up for ViaTalk July 18 and was told he'd have service in three to five days. After three weeks of waiting and complaining to ViaTalk, Clark said he disputed the charges on his credit card, effectively canceling the order.

FierceVoIP sent a query about Clark's experience to ViaTalk chief Brendan Brader at an address listed on the ViaTalk website. It bounced. In this Aug. 10 post on the DSLReports forum, Brader says the ViaTalk simply couldn't afford to hire enough people to handle the demand.

For more:
- Gary Kim comments at IP Business here
- TeleBlend's network status timeline is here
- the DSLReports ViaTalk forum is here 

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