Slashdot Mirror
Internet Phone Start-up Goes Belly-Up
westlake writes "The New York Times has a short piece on the failure of SunRocket, the second-largest internet phone service after Vonage, with 200,000 customers. Start-ups like SunRocket are under enormous pressure from the telcos and cable, which have marketing muscle and can bundle VoIP with Internet, TV, home security services, and so on. The start-up has only one product, and since they don't own the lines, they can't control the quality of service. Attracting subscribers can put a start-up deep into the red. Vonage added 166,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2007, but lost $77 million."
Rule #1 when dealing with level 1 tech support. You know what the problem is--so tell them what they need to hear. "Do you have a home phone number?" Your answer--"No" Problem solved. And whatever you do never tell them you're using a linux computer as your firewall! I'm running ipcop, but if I call tech support I tell them I've got my cable modem plugged directly into my Windows XP computer--and it still doesn't work.