I am lucky to have Skype I guess. ... Just read this today..

AP
Tuesday July 17, 1:26 am ET
VoIP Provider SunRocket Ceases Operations Without Warning

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Internet phone service provider SunRocket, which had as many as 200,000 customers nationwide, has ceased operations without warning.
The move by SunRocket, which offered service via Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, was first reported Monday on The New York Times' Web site.

It was confirmed by Martin Pinchinson, a spokesman for Sherwood Partners LLC of Palo Alto, Calif., who said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that the financial consulting company was handling SunRocket's liquidation.

A message left at SunRocket's Vienna, Va., headquarters was not immediately returned. The privately held company's Web site was still up Monday night. But SunRocket's customer service line offered callers a brief recording: "We are no longer taking customer service or sales calls. Goodbye."

SunRocket laid off almost 200 employees at its Springfield, Mo., call center Monday, The Springfield News-Leader reported.

The company also laid off what its chief marketing officer called "a significant number" of employees July 3, five days after the firings of two top executives, Chief Technology Officer Mark Fedor and Chief Information Officer Robert Kramer. The company's chief financial officer, David Samuels, resigned July 2.

Some people identifying themselves as SunRocket customers on Internet discussion boards were complaining about outages Monday, while others said their service was working. The company has been known to have periodic outages in the past.

SunRocket, which started in 1994, was one of the first companies to offer Internet phone technology, and reported about 200,000 customers as of April, second only to Vonage Holdings Corp. as a stand-alone VoIP provider.

That's definitely not the greatest news to start my day!

Not only do I need to get a new voip provider, but lawmakers will doubtless use this as an excuse to regulate this line of business, with costs for doing so being passed directly or indirectly back to the subscriber.

Oddly, I still have dialtone and incoming calls seem to be working.

I've been able to call tacoma numbers but calls to other area codes give me silence.

Aargh!
--Rich

ViaTalk is the latest to offer special deals to “orphaned” SunRocket subscribers.

Viatalk is offering 6 months free service for a contract buyout, and Vonage 3 months free service.

Here is how to switch from sunrocket to viatalk

http://www.viatalk.com/switch_to_viatalk.htm

Well, HeyTacoma!

My SunRocket line is still working for the most part, though some long distance calls aren't going through. I'm switching to ViaTalk which has comparable features (and hopefully is better capitalized) With 200,000 folks switching service, I imagine this will be a boon for all the other services. I realized that I've had SunRocket 18 days less than a year, so I've lost very little on what I got for my annual payment other than a bit of a hassle.

Here's another one that looks mildly scary for a primary phone service, but quite interesting at the Skype level. Check out

http://www.magicjack.com/site/index.html

"The Magic Jack"

It's a little USB dongle that plugs into any internet connected PC...the other side has a phone jack. The gizmo costs 40 bucks and comes with a year's free unlimited USA calling and an inbound phone number. Additional years are $19! It's run by a subsidiary of a CLEC so they own their own numbers and connections to the POTS grid.

I guess if this one goes belly-up, at least subscribers wouldn't be out the big bucks!

--Rich

RESTON, Va. and KIRKLAND, Wa. — 07/19/2007

Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) and Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR) plan to jointly construct the first nationwide mobile broadband network using WiMAX technology, and promote the global development of WiMAX-based services. The planned arrangement, which is set out in a letter of intent, is expected to provide broad benefits to consumers, businesses, educators, the Federal government and public safety users by fostering quicker, broader and more efficient deployment of a mobile WiMAX broadband network than either company could accomplish on its own.

http://www2.sprint.com/mr/news_dtl.do?id=17520

Look out WiFi.

Has anyone tried Clearwire yet? My friend tried to get it and was told it was not available in Dupont yet. If someone has Clearwire in Tacoma, I would like to hear about it. I wonder how it compares with my Cable modem from Advanced Stream, over the Click! Network?

Harmon....

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I’m now a satisfied Vonage customer, and I took the adapter they gave me, my "PAP2", with me to California last week, and it worked great at my sisters house. (My boss didnt even know I was away, when he called me.

Can’t do that w/ the Comacast cable voip adapter.... so THERE IS AN ADVANTAGE that I don’t see described in many of the blogs

Happy Camper,

May