New Internet Phone Company Debuts

It’s been a strange week for the Internet calling business. On Monday, SunRocket, a smallish competitor to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) leader Vonage, abruptly shut down operations, essentially announcing to its 200,000 customers, “Uh, sorry.” While the details of that mystery are still being teased out, a long-secretive venture called Ooma announced yesterday that it plans to offer a new device for Web-based phone calls this fall. The company hopes to compete with Vonage and Skype, and grab a share of what analysts predict to be a rapidly growing market for Internet phone calls. Ooma is grabbing attention because the company has big venture capital backers, and quite a few dollars behind it. But as this Business Week piece points out, their plan – customers pay $399 for a phone, then get free calls within the U.S. for life – probably won’t sound all that sharp to veterans of the SunRocket debacle, who saw their provider abandon them without notice.—Gregory Mone

Comments

[Scot]

Gosh, seems like it would not be terribly difficult to create a web phone the size of a cell phone, that connected via any open wireless connection. That would be sweet in cities where there is city-wide free wireless. Probably be unpopular with the cellular providers though. Maybe they ought to think about getting ahead of that particular curve with a dual-mode cell phone that gives free wireless calling when in range, and switches to cellular automatically when no wireless is available. Be nice if my laptop did that too while I'm thinking about it.

[dina bradford]

The Primus backed Lingo also offers reliable unlimited calls at reasonable rates. Their economical Small Talk and Lingo Link calling plans are perfect for home users.

[IvanSwartz]

I've been a Lingo customer for over six months, and have never had any issues with them. In my opinion, Lingo offers fairly good local and international calling solutions. By acquiring Lingo’s international numbers, I am now able to establish a local presence in London where I have many friends and relatives. Now, they can make phone calls to me at local call rates.