washingtonpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33031-2004Nov7.html
By Andrea Caumont
Washington Post Staff Writer
Two former MCI executives, Joyce Dorris and Paul Erickson, want to
bring Internet phone service to mainstream America. "We're in the
beginning of a wholesale transformation to have communications run
over Internet technology," said Erickson, chief executive of
SunRocket, a start-up in Vienna. "If you have broadband, you'd be
silly not to put your phone service on the Internet."
SunRocket Inc. began providing Voice over Internet Protocol service in
the Washington and Baltimore areas in September, and in Boston last
month. Dorris and Erickson said company plans to expand nationwide by
year-end.
"We're passionate about starting with a blank sheet of paper and
saying: 'What's the way [a phone company] should work? How can we make
it as simple as possible?'," Erickson said.
SunRocket charges $24.95 a month for almost all of its phone services,
with no added fees. The package includes unlimited domestic calls,
features such as voice mail and caller ID, an allowance for
international calls, two directory assistance calls and an extra phone
number with a distinctive ring and voice mail. A customer needs a
phone and a broadband connection that connects to a device SunRocket
calls "the gizmo."
The company has hundreds of customers already and Dorris and Erickson
hope to see that number in the hundreds of thousands by this time next
year.
At MCI, the two executives were behind some of the marketing tactics
that revitalized its long-distance telephone business in the 1990s.
Erickson said he invented 1-800-COLLECT, which became more
expensive. "You come up with something successful, and then the big-
company attitude takes over," he said. "Right now, there's a $4.99
surcharge and calls cost $1.15 per minute. Initially, it was $1.25 per
call and 25 cents per minute ... I feel bad because I started it."
Dorris said she helped create the Neighborhood Built by MCI, which
provided unlimited local and long-distance calls to customers for a
fixed rate. "We've built our careers on looking at the market and
taking a different approach," Dorris said.
But Internet phone service is looking less different as time goes
on. Independent operators such as Vonage of New Jersey are already
established, and giant phone and cable companies are moving into the
field, too. But Dorris and Erickson do not regard the large
communications companies as stiff competition.
"In new categories, it's independent brands who have the vision of the
way it should be that get embraced by consumers because they stand for
one thing. Customers want specialists," Dorris said. "As new
categories are born, it's typically not the big, old companies that
pave the way."
Technophobia, however, is probably their biggest challenge in
weaning potential customers from copper-wire phones. "Sometimes it
takes a friend, neighbor or colleague to say this works, it's
great," Erickson said. "It's those people that are going to carry
the message."
dog4dogg (dog4dogg@yahoo.com)