SunRocket VoIP review
April 26, 2005 by Mike Wendland
I’ve replaced my landline telephone with a SunRocket. By doing so, I’ve slashed my monthly telephone bill from around $60 a month to less than $17 a month — for unlimited calling throughout the United States and Canada. Here’s my review from today’s Free Press: MIKE WENDLAND: With SunRocket’s service, you can hang up landline
I have to say this is the most feature packed VoIP I have seen for consumers. This would have been great when the children were growing up, a long time ago.
I’m going to pass this information on to two of them to look at and see if they might be interested. Thanks!
What about 911 service?
Looks like just what I’ve been looking for Mike. Thanks! Great article by the way.
Mike, if u have not disconnected ur previous ph number yet , u should be able to transfer ur # even after signing up with sunrocket. i did the same with vonage. talk to them and they mostly will oblige. now that sunrocket is ‘mike certified’ i am tempted to try sunrocket :). keep up ur good work.
I’ve had SunRocket for a couple of months now, and the jury is still out. When my setup is functioning properly, it’s great. After all, the worst deal you can get is $25/month, and it has every feature known to phone service, as near as I can tell.
However, my initial installation was very difficult, as it appears that the hardware that SunRocket sent me was defective. I had to go to the mat with one of their supervisors to send me a replacement after a week’s worth of nights spent on the cell phone with SunRocket tech support going through power off/power on strategies, downloading upgraded ROM, and MAC spoofing, all to no avail. The replacement worked like a charm.
Now, two months later, my setup has been inoperable for four days now, I’ve spent ~4 hours on the cell phone with their tech support people, and the MAC spoofing and power on strategies and remote reset pulses have failed to deliver a solution.
SunRocket claims to be able to include 911 service, but it means you need to give SunRocket the physical address of the phone. I haven’t tested the 911 service yet.
I would like to share with you my experience of being a customer with Sun rocket for more than three months, initally it worked fine and as the days goes, it is one of the nightmare I ever had. Their technical support is very very bad and I have lot of problem with it and I am planning to switch to good reliable and most stable serive.
I agree that the jury is still out on my SunRocket trial. I too have experienced problems from day one - sound quality (echo’s), my voice cutting out, dropped calls AND the caller name not being displayed with caller I.D. (mine on outgoing calls and theirs on incoming). SunRocket said the caller I.D. name issue (which was suppose to be fixed by May 15) is not going to be fixed now until May 25. I inquired about the cancellation procedure and was told I just send the Gizmo box and crossover cable back (keeping the dual handset 2.8 GHz cordless phone system) but paying the shipping charge. I already have a top-of-the-line 5.8 GHz system, so some lucky friend will be getting these. I’m going to continue my trial period until the end (June 5) and hope they get their act together. If it works this would save me a ton of money (over $800 a year!). If not, I guess I’ll be giving Vontage a try.
Mike,
Now that you’ve had SunRocket for a couple of months — is it still going OK? How is the sound quality? I need a second line and I’m trying to decide between SunRocket, Vonage or a conventional phone line from the phone company. It will be for business, so the sound quality has to be equivalent to a regular landline.
SunRocket is simply not reliable. Its is silly, it is always, about 20 times a week down for a period of time. It dials then gets a busy signal for no reason, it will do that for up to an hour. They will loose there network for hours and in some cases a whole day or two. It is not (not not not) a primary line if you need reliability. Also, privacy issues I have had a call waiting call enter into my other call. Bad at this stage sunrocket customers are test rats.
Very Poor.
Growing Pains? Perhaps SunRocket is just not mature yet. All I know is that I have a new problem every week (like no service, or no incoming, or no outgoing, or no voicemail, or no outgoing caller ID - this means people won’t pick up the phone when I call -, or dropped calls, the list can go on…). The point is that, at least once a week, I have trouble with SunRocket and spend at least 1/2 hour addressing it. It’s not MY technical ability, I’m a programmer… Just buy a more robust service. It’s worth the extra $5/month.
I have Sunrocket and have never had a call dropped or had problems with no service, however, I get clicking, and have been told that I sound like I’m under water or plain can’t be heard 3 out of 5 calls.
It seems I have to dial 3 times to get a “good line”. I’m going to mess with the set up. Right now I have Cable Modem>Wireless Router>Gizmo.
I’m going to try Cable>Gizmo>Wireless and hope I don’t lose my network.