Sunrocket: The Final Call, The Last Word

Jan Walter was Senior Director of Systems Architecture at Sunrocket, until he was fired for speaking out and standing up for best practices that might have saved the company. Here is his inside story of how one of VoIP's stars went supernova in July, and what this failure signals for the industry.

Sunrocket rocketed to fame as the "no gotchas" Internet telephone service, signing up some 200,000 users. While the pricing, setup, and service appeared to shine, the company was melting down. Its founding dot-com gurus clashed with big-wig telecom pros brought in by VCs, creating a fatal management schism.

One bad decision after another eventually fubar'd the technology and paralyzed the company. The result: an unceremonious shut down, with little warning to customers, and no refunds. Customers who paid in advance for a year of service were out in the cold along with those who signed up days before the company closed. All have have little if any recourse.

Sunrocket's switch is scheduled to be shut off no later than August 5th, 2007. Right now the network is probably running on autopilot, as all personnel were fired. Both Jan and Rich used the zombie network to conduct this interview, resulting in what is certainly one of the last calls to be conducted on Sunrocket. (Violins, please.)



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