exSunRocket Customers May Claim Lost Funds

SunRocket has recently sent out a letter stating that SunRocket, Inc. has transferred ownership of all tangible and intangible assets to the board members for liquidation. Upon liquidation, the board members are to distribute funds to all creditors, in this batch of creditors is the exSunRocket customer that had time left on their subscription.

If you are one of the subscribers who still had time left on his/her subscription (which is most likely everyone, I had 8 months left), you have the right to claim yourself as a creditor.

You can view the Cover Letter and the Proof of Claim Form here.

I filled out the claim, added all of my supporting documents and wrote my Statement About the Debt.

For the supporting documents, I included the following:

• My Plan information from SunRocket's account page. To get this, login to your SunRocket account, yes as of today it is still up. Click 'My Account', then click 'Plan Information'. Now when I printed mine, the text came out all garbled, most likely resulted from poor programming. So what I did was saved it as a pdf document, and then printed it and it looked fine. If you do not have the means to print to pdf, go download and install PDF Creator.
• My Account Overview from SunRocket's account page. Can be printed from when you login to SunRocket, click 'My Account'. I had the same text problem here as well.
• The email that I received from SunRocket regarding the discontinuation of services, which I made a pdf copy of for all of you here.

For my Statement About the Debt, I wrote the following:

Statement About the Debt

This is a claim for a debt from SunRocket, Inc. On December 06, 2006, I, Christopher M Mancini entered into an agreement with SunRocket, Inc, in which I paid SunRocket in advance for services to be rendered. In this agreement, SunRocket, Inc was to provide services for a total of 15 months, which would have ended on March 06, 2008.

Sometime around July 21, 2007, SunRocket announced that it was closing its doors. They discontinued accepting customer and technical support calls, as well as new subscribers. I received the attached message from SunRocket stating that all SunRocket services were to be discontinued no later than August 5th, 2007.

My claim is for $92.87. I am making this claim based off of the following calculation:

$92.87 = 7 months ( $199 / 15 months )

I took the total that I paid for services to be rendered and divided that by the total months in the agreement. Then I multiplied it by the total months remaining in the agreement using March 06, 2008 as the date in which my agreement was to end and August 5th, 2007 as the date in which my services were terminated.

Lets see if the "Assignee" will actually follow through and pay these debts.

Chris

HowTo: Tweaking Gizmo for Better Service w/ ViaTalk

I had the opportunity to do some research, as well as speak with Collin, a technical support rep from ViaTalk, to get a little bit better grasp on how to tweak my gizmo (Linksys SPA-2102) to get better performance.

He is a summary of my research:

• Make sure you have the most recent firmware. For the Linksys SPA-2102 from SunRocket, you can get the latest firmware on Linksys' support site.
• Setup your UDP SIP Port to some other port than 5060. Pick 5080, or 5085, or etc... The reasoning, is by default, all gizmos are configured to transmit on 5060. When the call hits the ViaTalk servers, it is competing with other calls on that port. By picking a different port you reduce the amount of congestion that your gizmo may experience.
• Make sure that if you have a broadband router, that it has the most up to date firmware. If your broadband router is old (2+ years), you may want to consider upgrading to a broadband router that boasts high performance for "VOIP", "Gaming", or "Broadband Booster". These routers are designed to adjust bandwidth settings based on critical application use, such as digital phone traffic from ViaTalk or another service provider.
• Verify that the server you are connecting to your VOIP service provider is the closest possible server to your location. This is ideal, because the closer to you the server is, the less "hops" your voice packets have to travel through to get to the destination. For every "hop" your phone call needs to travel, will decrease the quality significantly.

Hopefully these tips will help some of you out there. If anyone has other tips to improve call quality, please do not hesitate to share by leaving a comment.

Chris

ViaTalk: Porting Complete

This is just an update, as of today my primary phone number has been ported. They promised me it would be completed on the 13th, it is now the 17th and it is complete.

So if you are porting a number to ViaTalk, please do not expect it to be done in a quick fashion.

ViaTalk: Q and A From a ViaTalk Rep

Brendan from ViaTalk is a brave lad. Offering QnA in DSLReports forum to address the massive amount of concerns from subscribers. I will summarize the questions and answers posted.

Q: You've stated on numerous ocassions that current customers could expect some new features soon.When will these new features start to appear. With the SR influx your TS is almost unreachable and you stated a couple of weeks ago that the wait time should drop dramatically. When?
A: Features - Our dev team will be being diverted back to their regular duties within the next week or two.
Support - We've been working very hard on this, as it has been our primary area of focus lately. Hold times already have dropped dramatically - For instance our average hold time right now is at about 30 minutes.

Q: I as well as several thousand others, emailed in supporting documents for the contract buyout. The system created a support ticket for such. When do you anticipate these tickets will be addressed and current contract end dates then modified?
I understand this is not top priority, however, many of us feel lost in the system with no communication.
A: These are being treated as our lowest priority issue at the current time, as they are not really time sensitive issues. They will all be taken care of well before they will become an issue (renewal time).

Q: After signing up and already paying my $199 up front for a year, I was just sent an invoice today for an additional $2.50 for E911 service. I was under the impression that this monthly fee was included in the $199 yearly promotional. If that assumption is incorrect, the $199/year deal is no longer such a good deal. Was it supposed to be included or not?
A: There are two $1.25 charges, invoiced monthly on the 15th of the month, that cover various 911, regulatory fees, etc. These are listed on the plan pages, the order form, and in the terms of service.

Q: Could you please comment on this voicemail issue? It affects many of us and gives my callers the impression that we don't have a "real" phone company (or our answering machines are broken). The impression that I get is that no one really knows what the issue is - hopefully, you can dispel this. I'd appreciate hearing a firm target date for when this will be fixed.
A: We are aware of this issue and are currently working a resolution to it. My guess on an ETA would be within a couple of days.

Q: West coast servers? Plus is fail over still working even though it is not in CP? Thanks, Eric
A: We have at least one west coast server online currently, with more to follow in the future.

Q: There has been a lot of discussion for a long time now regarding the voicemail system. A voicemail system is a key element in a phone service...and the current system lacks just about everything that a "modern" voicemail system should offer (better navigation such as fast forward, rewind, pause, etc, etc). Using an open source product puts that responsibility on the provider to improve its functionality. Curious as to why this has remained the way it has for so long. It is a negative point of the service. Thanks Brendan.
A: Upgrading our VM system is something that is on our radar, however it currently is not at the top of the list as a result of our efforts being concentrated elsewhere due to the SR incident.

Q: Any plans in the near future to add the ability for a distinctive ring for a virtual number (no matter who the caller is)?
A: This is something we have discussed recently, and it will require some modification to how forwards are currently working, so while it is possible in the future it is not on the immediate radar.

Q: How about answering tickets? Mine was posted last week and is still open--considering the subject (I never got a password for configuring my ex-SR gizmo, therefore I have no service), I was expecting it to be answered by now.
A: We're working our staff back into their normal rotation/duties as quickly as we can. In the meantime, if you have access to your control panel, you can get this information yourself in the softphone section of your control panel.

This is a clear statement from ViaTalk, that they are dedicated to providing quality service to their customers. I feel confident that they have our best interests in mind.

But I have a few comments of my own, which I think would make me a happier customer.

• When you send someone an invoice, take a moment and write what it is for. Don't just send an invoice with no information on it whatsoever.
• Reorganize your pricing plans to include the $2.50 charge per month for E911 service. It is quite tacky to request your customers to pay $199 up front for service, and then charge them $2.50 a month for a lousy government regulation fee.
• The day that SunRocket showed signs it was going to tank, they should have had every HR person on the phone calling applicants. I am sorry, but it has been about 23 days since it was quite obvious SunRocket was biting the bullet, they could have had quite a bit of staff trained by that time. Or alternatively, they could have temporarily hired a call center to handle the influx until they could hire an adequate staff to handle the load.
• Offer better support for BYOD customers. Since you obviously will not have the staff to support your customers the best way possible the next time a large competitor tanks, then they should take the time to draft up some tutorials on configuring gizmos for their service.
• When it there is going to be an extra charge to port more than one number, tell the customer before processing the port.
• Lastly, when you tell the customer that their number will be completely ported by a specific date, have it done by that date. My one number was supposed to be ported on the 13th, it is now the 16th and it still has not been done.

Chris

Lingo: How Does it Compare

If you are an ex SunRocket customer, Lingo has an offer you may be interested in. They have a service plan that is comparable to that of SunRocket's, Unlimited US, Canada, and Puerto Rico calls for $195 a year. Not bad. Specifically for SunRocket customers, they are offering reimbursement of the shipping and activation charges after you stay as their customer for 90 days. Ok, so not the best, but not bad.

As you all know, I have not been 100% satisfied with ViaTalk, so I had to investigate. I called their tech support to see how quickly they answered, under 3 minutes. Wow what a difference. I spoke with "Andrew" (there was no way he was American, this was definitely overseas tech support), "Andrew" informed me that my SunRocket gizmo will not work on their network. Well thats not cool.

I have two phone numbers, unless I have a second account, the second one acts as a virtual phone number and can only be forwarded to my primary phone number. I guess I become spoiled with SunRocket, they let me have my second number forward to my cell phone without having a second account. Damn you SunRocket! I guess I will never find that option again.

My thoughts are this. Lingo is backed by Primus, a billion dollar telecommunications company, so they are legit. They have offshored support employees, no big deal as long as I can understand them and I wait no longer than 5 minutes. They cannot use my old gizmo, thats annoying for me, but may not be for the users that have bricks for gizmos. If you are one of the unfortunate exSunRocket customers that this has happened to, then maybe Lingo may be a good option for you.

Anyone who does sign up with Lingo, please add a comment to reflect upon your experiences with them.

I did see some mixed reviews for Lingo, so before you sign up, please do your homework.

Chris

TeleBlend Update

I had the opportunity to speak with Mark Kruskol of MJK Public Relations through email. He was the spotlight in Computer World's article titled "Dealing with a VoIP Provider as a Small Business Owner". He informed me that since the article he received a call from Brian Lustig, the TeleBlend Publicist who said that his incoming phone service should be working. His outage lasted from Monday, August 6 until approximately 2:30pm PST Tuesday, August 14th.

Personally, I think Mark's outage would have lasted quite a bit longer had he not vented his frustrations to Computer World. Clever move by Mark to expedite the restoration of his service. There is no excuse for TeleBlend to leave him and many other subscribers without phone service for 8 days.

Chris

TeleBlend: Small Business Owner Deals w/ Poor Service

Teleblend continues to blame shortcomings on SunRocket's mess. ComputerWorld describes how one business owner is dealing with the poor service that TeleBlend continues to provide. The article can be found here.

ViaTalk: Fed up. Hope in sight?

I have been continuing to have issues with ViaTalk.

I submitted a ticket attempting to address poor quality of service on August 5th and have not received a response. I attempt to call them from my ViaTalk phone but it doesn't ring. It dials and then is quiet. I try from my cell phone, it works but then I hear that I am caller 54. Fun huh. No way on a weekday I am going to wait through 54 callers on my cell phone.

I receive notice on August 6th that one of my numbers was to be ported on the 9th and one on the 13th. I received notice on the 10th stating that my number was ported successfully. I logged in, there is no sign of my old number that should have been
ported.

I received an email on the 10th, stating the following:

Dear Chris Mancini,
Notice: Your invoice 393875 has been processed by ViaTalk.com.

Status:Manual Payment
Invoice Number:393875
Invoice Amount:$3.95
Date Paid:2007/08/10
Amount Left:$0.00
Trans ID:1520358057

Outstanding Balance: none

You may login to view your invoice(s) online at any time:
https://support.viatalk.com/billing/

Thank you,

Billing Dept.
ViaTalk.com

I went online, curious to know why I was charged $3.95 to my credit card. This is what I saw:

2007/08/10 Manual: Generated Invoice 393875 $3.95 $0.00 $-3.95
2007/08/10 Manual Payment (181074) 393875 $0.00 $3.95 $0.00

This gave me no information on why I was charged $3.95.

While searching through my account options on ViaTalk's website, I found an option labaled priority support. So apparently for $1.95 per month, you can receive "cut in line" priority when calling ViaTalk. Ok so I signed up, tried it, lets just say, nothing was "priority".

So, I started as caller 16 as I began my call as a priority support subscriber, it took 1 hour and 50 minutes to get on the phone with someone. I felt like a VIP, I swear.

So here is a condensed version of my conversation with Collin of ViaTalk.

I asked Collin how they could charge $1.95 a month for priority support if I was still waiting 1 hour and 50 minutes to speak with someone. He apologized on behalf of the company, and informed me under normal circumstances, their priority support subscribers usually experience less than 5 minutes of wait time.

He also informed me that ViaTalk has been on a hiring spree. They have doubled their staff in the last three weeks. There is only one problem, all of those new employees, are just finishing training. Hence the long wait times.

Collin has informed me that ViaTalk has opened its doors to over 20,000 SunRocket refugees. Thats about 10% of SunRockets original subscriber base, thats quite a bit of growth in such a short time.

In regards to the $3.95 charge was because I had transfered 2 numbers from SunRocket. The first number was free, the second was $3.95. Ok I am fine with that, but I informed Collin that it is good business practice, to inform the customer of charges before they occur. Even if they included in the invoice what the $3.95 was for, I would not have become upset over it.

He informed that because the number that had ported already had been my second number, it is setup automatically to forward to my ViaTalk number. It is considered a virtual number, that is why it does not display in my account. Personally I think it should, it is almost as if it doesn't exist. In order to use it, I would need to subscribe to a second line.

I asked him why I couldn't call ViaTalk from my ViaTalk phone. He said that this was not new regarding BYOD customers with SunRocket phones. Apparently, SunRocket may have configured the devices to prevent their users from contacting the competition, honestly I can believe that. So I will research and see if I cannot find a resolution for this, Collin was unable to provide one.

He also gave me some tips in improving my call quality, I will post them in a separate article.

My overall conversation with Collin was pleasant. He was obviously American, no outsourced support with ViaTalk which is good to hear. He was sincere and responsive to my distress. Under the circumstances, I feel that ViaTalk is reputable and that I feel that other subscribers having issues should hang in there. ViaTalk is working hard to meet the needs of their 20,000 new subscribers, which I believe must be a difficult task.

ViaTalk Continues to Show Signs of Poor Support

ViaTalk, one digital phone service provider who has gained greatly since SunRocket's demise, is continuing to display their current state of poor support.

If you are a BYOD(Bring Your Own Device) subscriber and you filed the paperwork necessary to port your SunRocket phone number to ViaTalk, you may not be notified when the porting is complete. Instead, you may come home and find your phone has no dial tone.

If this has happened to you, you simply have to login with your ported number and your old password, click on softphone configuration and view your new device password. Then simply login to your gizmo's admin pages and update your user name and password.

Under normal circumstances, I would not tolerate such poor service and lack of concern of keeping my phone service uninterrupted, but I continue to blindly show leniency to ViaTalk.

Update: Quality of ViaTalk

So i promised an update on the quality of ViaTalk. Here it is, if you didn't read my previous post, you can do so here.

Quality of phone call has been much much better.

Still having issues accessing voicemail through the handset, most of the time I get a busy signal. I feel like I should submit a trouble ticket and demand they tell me who keeps checking my voicemail messages. :D

Best result to listening my messages has been going online and listening to them that way.

Have not had consistency in sending faxes. 1 out of 5 go through. I am also unsure as to whether ViaTalk has any restrictions preventing me from faxing so that I pay for a dedicated fax line. That would be very sneaky, but completely understandable in respect to such cheap phone service.

Customer support is still sluggish. They are responsive, but do not expect a quick response. This is also to be expected considering the large amount of orders for new service from displaced Sun Rocket customers.

IMHO: ViaTalk is doing well. You have to remember, VOIP is a low cost alternative to a land line telephone. You get all of the services and more of a basic telephone line at a fraction of the cost. ViaTalk is a relatively small company compared to the major players, but I feel that they are not sneaky as Teleblend is, they are one of the lowest priced, and the quality of phone service is good. Their support needs work and their network needs work, but hopefully with all these new orders, they will have the cash flow to make the right moves.

Chris

Another Possible Gizmo (Linksys SPA-2102) Password

A user posted a comment listing another possible password for the ex-SunRocket Linksys SPA-2102 gizmo.

79309925#

Keep me updated on if it works.

Chris

Even our Gizmos Maker Gives us the Run-Around

A user of dslreports.com received this message from Linksys regarding the Gizmo SPA-2102.

Dear Valued Sipura Customer,

"Linksys' goal is to help SunRocket subscribers to continue to use their Linksys ATA (the SPA2102-R1 Analog Telephone Adapter) equipment. Linksys no longer owns the ATA equipment and we will comply with any appropriate, authorized requests to facilitate the transfer of SunRocket's service. We understand that there are negotiations currently taking place between SunRocket and other 3rd party service providers. However, until we receive the details of any agreements between those companies from an authorized source, in addition to any approvals or consents that may be required from any applicable third party with an interest in those transactions, we are not in a position to re-provision the ATA units."

Sincerely,

Gerald (Badge 18316)
Sipura Support

Honestly, at this point I think the only ones to be angry with is Sherwood Partners, LLC. I think what we should start doing is begin to spam them as they are with us. I still am receiving notices that my service is discontinued, and that they want me to sign up with Teleblend & Packet 8. Why, so that they can recoup their lost investment?

What about my money? What about our gizmos? As investors, they should know that you only invest the money you are willing to lose. When you purchase a service (for instance, a trusting consumer purchasing a years worth of VoiceOverIP Telephone service), you are not spending money you risk to lose, you are paying for a service for which you intend to consume. I have not fully consumed what I paid for, for that I am outraged.

But Sherwood on the other hand, is liquidating assets, is making deals with Packet 8 and Teleblend to recoup funds that they knew from the beginning they might not get back. So why should they get the right to shaft over 200,o00 people to get back this money.

My conclusion, is I am no longer going to focus my frustrations on Teleblend, the exSunRocket employees or executives, or even at Linksys. I am going to the source, I am going to Sherwood for answers. I think they should be held accountable for this disaster and how so many exSunRocket patrons are without phone service, without gizmos and without their money.

Quality of ViaTalk

Ok, so I want to give ViaTalk the benefit of the doubt as being one of the more popular refugee sites for ex-SunRocket customers. But, i feel slightly dissatisfied with the quality of service that I am receiving. Not just quality of phone service, but also quality of customer service. It took them over 3 days to notify me that the paperwork I sent in to have my phone number ported was missing information. Then another 2 days to let me know that the paperwork I resent was correct.

i have had friends and family notify me that it has been dificult or impossible to leave a voicemail for me. As well as call quality has been extremely varied. One day the call quality was so bad, I had to hang up and call the person back using my cell phone. The next day calling the same person, it was crystal clear.

Don't get me wrong, I think ViaTalk can pull through. But it makes me nervous because the VOIP industry has had some rough patches lately. Not to mention one of the most common reasons businesses go under is their inability to handle growth. If ViaTalk is going to stay afloat, they need to get a handle on this large influx of business.

I will post an update regarding ViaTalk's quality of service.

Chris

Nuvio Posts Directions to Provision Gizmos for their Service

Nuvio, a provider of PBX voice service, has setup a section of their website for SunRocket customers. They have posted how to unlock the AC-211-SR, AC-211N-SR, Linksys SPA 2102 and InnoMedia 6328.

Please note, they have not solved the no longer working password problem:

Note: If you have a Linksys SPA-2102, please try to unlock the device using these instructions before signing up for Nuvio service. A small number of customers are reporting difficulty unlocking the Linksys SPA-2102. This is likely due to TeleBlend, in a effort to retain a portion of the SunRocket Customer base having likely reconfigured passwords on the Linksys SPA-2102. Nuvio is currently working on a solution for this issue. Please check this page for updates.

This information can be found at http://direct.nuvio.com/sunrocket/devices.html

Teleblend Claims No Password Change

Mihir Gandhi has spoken with Lisa Bickford from Teleblend. She claims that she is unaware of any changes to the admin passwords that unlock the Gizmos. She stated that the devices were provisioned for use on Teleblend's network, but that passwords were not changed.

So if Teleblend did not provision the password change, then who did? Personally I seem rather skeptical.

Nuvio, another VOIP service provider, has made this statement on their website regarding converting SunRocket customers:

Note: If you have a Linksys SPA-2102, please try to unlock the device using these instructions before signing up for Nuvio service. A small number of customers are reporting difficulty unlocking the Linksys SPA-2102. This is likely due to TeleBlend, in a effort to retain a portion of the SunRocket Customer base having likely reconfigured passwords on the Linksys SPA-2102. Nuvio is currently working on a solution for this issue. Please check this page for updates.

So I guess I am not the only person who feels this way.

Chris

Configuring 2 lines with Innomedia MTA6328-2re & Viatalk

This article was written by Mihir Gandhi, a link to the original post can be found at the bottom.

---

Adam Nollmeyer commented on my previous post about the 2-line feature offered by Viatalk. I tried it out, and I am glad to report that I have a step-by-step guide on how to get this working.

Before I start - one caveat: for me, line 2 seems to take precedence over line 1. In other words, when someone calls me, the phone connected to line 2 rings, but the phone connected to line 1 does not! Same thing happens for call waiting - only line 2 gets the call. However, I am able to make calls from both lines simultaneously. This may be a Innomedia issue, but I am not certain.

Anyways, here is the step-by-step:

Step 1: Enable line 2 on the Sunrocket/Innomedia MTA6328-2re Gizmo.

a) Enabling the 2nd line is not available via the web interface - it is only available from telnet. Telnet to 192.168.251.1 (in windows, you can do this by going to START -> Run. Type in “telnet 192.168.251.1″ and click OK)
b) Log in using the username ‘admin’ (all lower-case) and password ‘7UprUtew’ (case-sensitive).
c) Type in ‘Mp’ (without quotes, case-sensitive). This option will allow you the configure the phone ports.
d) Follow the on-screen prompts to enable both the ports. When prompted whether you want to save the configuration permanently, select ‘y’.
e) Power-cycle the gizmo by unplugging the power cord, wait 20 seconds, and plug the power cord back in the gizmo. At this point, your gizmo should have both lines up and running.

Step 2: Configure the second line

a) Go to http://192.168.251.1/Voice_adminPage.htm and login using ‘admin’ and ‘7UprUtew’ as the username and password respectively.
b) From the menu bar, go to VoIP -> User Account. For line 1, your ‘username’ must be set to your 11-digit phone number (starting with country code 1). The password was sent to you by viatalk in the activation email. All other fields must be blank (user name, authentication ID, Hot Phone number). Select ‘No’ for the ‘Use hot phone number’ option, and ‘Yes’ for the ‘Fax T38′ option. Click the “Save” button.
c) Repeat step (b) above for line 2 and click the “Save” button.

Step 3: Reboot/Reset/Power-cycle everything

a) Power cycle your cable modem
b) Power cycle your gizmo (If the gizmo is behind a router, then power cycle the router, then the gizmo)
c) Power cycle the phone connected to Line 1
d) Power cycle the phone connected to Line 2

Now everything should be working! Try it out and let me know how it works. One forewarning: For the first few calls, both my phones were ringing. This issue auto-corrected it self after a few calls. So if this happens to you, just wait 10 minutes or so and try again.

ENJOY!

---

The original post can be found at Mihir Gandhi’s Blog @ http://gandhi.wordpress.com/

Bank of America Sympathizes with SunRocket Customers

Supposedly, if you payed for SunRocket's service with your Bank of America Visa, then you are in luck. On your monthly statement you should find a section called "Important Information About This Account". In this section should be a form titled "Customer Statement of Disputed Item".

Fill out the form as follows:

1) Name, Transaction Date, Posting Date, Amount $, Account Number, and Merchant Name should be filled in specific to your info.

2) Disputed amount is calculated by taking your situation to a monthly rate and multiplying by the months remaining on your contract. For example, if you paid $200 for 2 years and have 10 months remaining it would be (200/24)=8.3333333*10 or $83.33

3) Reference number: If you do not know your reference # log in online and click on the specific transaction.

4) Check box #9 and write a short letter explaining the situation, how many months of service you've had and how many months of service remain un-rendered.

5) Sign, Date and list your contact #'s.

6) include the signed form, your letter and any back-up info you feel may apply in an envelope and send to: Billing Inquiries, P.O. Box 15026, Wilmington, DE 19850-5026, USA.

Don't forget, make copies of whatever you send in.

Recoup funds paid to SunRocket

I read on another site that many people are calling their credit card companies and disputing the charges to their account from SunRocket. If your purchase with SunRocket was within 90 days, there is a good chance you will recoup your funds. If it is over 90 days since your purchase, you may have a little bit more work to do, but it still may be possible. Contact your credit card issuer and discuss with them what would be required.

SunRocket will inevitably be going bankrupt so the sooner you report a dispute for services not rendered, the better chance you will be getting your money back.

SunRocket's Network Being Liquidated?

There are rumors spreading, and I wouldn't be surprised, that the major stakeholders that funded SunRocket originally were the ones that cut the executives off from more funds. They then proceded to take control of the company during its unforeseen demise and begin making deals with Packet 8 and Teleblend. Its interesting because SunRocket is now spamming me this message of how they have a deal with Packet 8 and Teleblend, in fact if I switch to Teleblend, there is no need to port my number? Why is that you ask, because they now run the network...

Which brings me to another thought. If a new service provider has snaggled up SunRocket's assets, that puts many users of the Gizmo (Linksys SPA-2102) in deep water. Chances are the first thing the new owners did was provision the gizmos and change the password. I will keep my ears open on the web to decipher if my theories are correct, and if I discover a new password I will post it here.

There is still hope.

Sunrocket Shuts Down

The second largest digital phone service provider, SunRocket Inc., has begun the process of closing its doors. Leaving over 200,000 subscribers without phone service. This action came without any warning to their subscribers.

If you attempt to call SunRocket, you will hear “We are no longer taking customer service or sales calls. Goodbye.”

SunRocket lured in many customers with their offer of digital phone service for a year for $199. As early as Monday the 16th, SunRocket customers began making complaints that they were receiving patchy service or no service at all.

As a subscriber to SunRocket myself, I was very disappointed to hear the news. I quickly researched what was happening. I found ViaTalk, they offered very similar service to SunRocket in comparison of price and features, plus they offered a contract buyout of my remaining SunRocket service. ViaTalk will offer me up to 6 months of their service in match with how many months of service I had remaining with SunRocket. What a deal, I say.

I signed up with them and reconfigured my SunRocket gizmo to work on their service. I just submitted the paperwork to port my SR number. I have already began using their service and I am pleased. I know I need to tweak my settings some because I have not been able to successfully send a fax transmission yet.

I will post in a later article on how to unlock your Linksys SPA-2102 (Gizmo) to work with ViaTalks service.

Doc

Personally, I was a subscriber and my phone service was up and running till I switched over to ViaTalk yesterday.