By Sharla Sikes

The waves from VoIP provider SunRocket closing shop are still wreaking havoc in the VoIP industry, with small business owners perhaps suffering the most.

VoIP providers tout their products as being the ideal product for small and medium-sized businesses. With a wide range of features and applications, that’s certainly true, but it’s also up to the business owner to get the most from his or her chosen VoIP service.

In many small businesses, the employees wear more than one hat. Without the income or workload required to keep an IT or communications manager on the payroll, the company’s communications must be relatively easy to troubleshoot.

When the service suffers outages, what does one do?

Marc Kruskol, owner of MJK Public Relations in Van Nuys, Calif.,  is facing just such a problem. Dealing with the fallout of SunRocket’s demise, Kruskol has been without service for days after switching to Teleblend. 

Teleblend, which restored service to all but 1 percent of its customers, blames SunRocket: “SunRocket left a huge mess,” said Teleblend spokesman Brian Lustig. Teleblend paid to take over SunRocket’s network.

Rival Packet8, the other major provider to take over stranded SunRocket customers, instead transferred new customers to its own network, and has not been experiencing the troubles that Teleblend has.

Experiences like Kruskol’s drive customers away from VoIP, even though the service is so uniquely well-suited to a small business.

With its low costs and flexibility, many businesses will benefit from weathering the storm as SunRocket’s transfer problems are sorted out by new providers. But when opportunities, sales or customers are lost, that storm can really hurt some businesses.

Kruskol feels that a complaint to the company isn’t enough. He wants the whole industry to know about the poor service he feels he’s received from

“We, as customers need you to let everyone know what is going on and to stop this company and others like it from ripping off consumers,” he said in an email.

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