Your Questions About Internet Business Phone Service

Jere answers:

Your options depends upon the cheapest connection to your place of business. I currently have:

Charter Cable TV with Internet service that cost me $120 a month.
Vonage phone service – $24 month unlimited and no long distance charges
Verizon Cell Phone – $65 with 1,500 minutes and free text

So for my three the total cost is about $210 a month.

I’ve always had good service and good response for all.

Good luck and I hope this helps.

OK…. Just because a sales person tells you that an ‘All In One’ plan is better… Doesn’t mean it’s true!

Jere answers:

Whaaaaaaaaaat???? No what is it???? 80 extension “IS” pbx!!

Jere answers:

I got an email this morning saying that Packet8 is taking over Sunrocket customer!!!

Http://getpacket8.packet8.net/sunrocket/…

The offer looks pretty good to me!!

“PACKET8 has 100,000 consumer [accounts] and those are key because that base provides us with economies of scale — for example, PSTN termination.

Internally-developed technology is another key to Packet8’s stability — a contrast to SunRocket which licensed its technology from other companies.

“PACKET8 has 68 patents in this [VoIP] technology,” “We co-invented the technology. Because we control the technology, [we control] quality, reliability, scalability. Over the long term, it’s helped us reduce our cost base because Packet8 don’t have to pay anybody for anything.”

And the P8 sales team has been signing up 700-800 new customers daily since SR went out of business.

I got this from the P8 forum…

Internet Phone Company Halts Operations
July 17, 2007
Internet Phone Company Halts Operations

SunRocket, an Internet telephone company, has ceased operations and is moving its customers to one or more other companies, according to a person briefed on its status.

A recording on SunRocket’s customer service line said the company “is no longer taking customer service or sales calls.” Executives of SunRocket, which was founded in 2004 and is based in Vienna, Va., could not be reached for comment.

Telecommunications industry analysts said the development Highlights the struggles of start-ups trying to offer telephone service over the Internet.

These start-ups face enormous competitive pressure from the biggest players in the telecommunications industry, both cable and traditional telephone companies. The cable companies in particular have made a strong push into the telephone market by offering the service as part of a product bundle with television and Internet access.

The start-ups, like SunRocket and Vonage, the best known of the group, tend to offer a single product, and they do not have the same power as the larger companies to control quality of service because they do not operate their own telecommunications lines, said Richard Greenfield, a media analyst at Pali Research in New York.

T at Pali Research in New York.

In April, SunRocket announced that it had reached 200,000 subscribers and said the milestone was a testament to consumers’ embrace of Internet telephony, which allows telephone calls to be transmitted as data over the Internet. One of SunRocket’s main pitches to potential customers was its offer of $199 for a year of unlimited calling to the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.

Vonage, which went public last year, was a pioneer in the commercialization of the technology. But its fortunes have floundered too, along with its stock, which has been on a steady slide over the last year, closing Wednesday at $2.95.

Alan Bezoza, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., said Vonage had continued to add subscribers, but the cost of attracting them had put the company deep into the red. He said that in its first quarter this year, Vonage added 166,000 customers, but lost $73 million. The start-ups “are going up against the marketing muscle of very large companies, like cable and telecom companies,” Mr. Bezoza said.

Mr. Bezoza said that he believed that stand-alone Internet telephone companies could wind up as successful niche players in the market, but their investors would have to be willing to endure a substantial period of losses before they built enough of a customer base to be profitable.

I have been a P8 customer for over 3 years now, and have been very happy!!

I get a my latest new from dslreports.com

Sunrocket has gone bankrupt, just google it and you will find like millions of things on it, about your money, depending on how long ago you paid and how many more months you had left, you should call your credit card company and tell them you didn’t get a full service from sunrocket, and they should give you some money back. We only had like one or two months left on ours so I don’t think we will be trying to get a few dollars back.

Jere answers:

Http://ecommerce-times.blogspot.com

Jere answers:

If you still want to have a phone number there are options for using VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) instead of your standard analog landline telephone.

VoIP will reduce your cost but it won’t completely eliminate them. You will need to transfer your number to a SIP provider. Typically SIP providers will give you free pc to pc calls, but there will still be charges to be able to make and take phone calls from standard phones and cell phones. But your long distance charges in particular will be lower by taking advantage of your internet connection. You also have more options to use software for controlling your phone system which, and software for a virtually PBX, Auto Attendant, or On-Hold Messaging, is also going to be cheaper than its hardware counterparts.

Here is a link on NCH Software that talks about and gives links to several different SIP providers that you can compare and take a look at to see what might meet your needs.
Http://www.nch.com.au/talk/sip.html

My second reason for giving that particular link is that NCH has some really good and economical telephony software that is designed with small business in particular in mind, so you may well want to take a look at their telephony software:
http://www.nch.com.au/phone/index.html

When you are using VoIP you have the option to use a softphone software application like NCH’s ExpressTalk and talk through your computer’s speakers and microphone, or you can use either a USB Phone plugged into your computer, or IP phones on you LAN (Local Area Network). If you will be looking for phones, here are two links for USB and IP phones respectively.
Http://www.altoedge.com/usbphones/index.html
http://www.altoedge.com/ipphones/index.html

I know I just threw a whole bunch of information at you, but I hope it helps you start to sort things out. Good Luck!