Is MagicJack the new Sunrocket?

For those of you that missed that mess, Sunrocket was a VoIP service that promised unlimited domestic and long distance calls in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico for $200/year or less, depending on the promotion. Sometimes you even got a $50 cordless phone just for signing up. The service was provided through a black box, you could either plug it into your home network router, or you could plug your broadband connection into it and use it as a one-port router. I was one of the lucky ones: the day I signed up I was given two years of full service for $200.

The service was great, but it did not seem to take advantage of QoS, so I had to make sure that I was not doing a big download before I reached for the phone to make a work call. Once the connection was using more than 200K or so, it did not really like it and started sounding noisy (one of the basic reasons why my current boss hated that line so much).

Sunrocket crashed and burned. I got about 14 months of service out of my $200, still an exceptional value. I did not want to try another of those outfits, so I simply upgraded my Comcast account to a triple play, which got me a new cable modem with built-in VoIP and proper QoS. It is still a bit noisy, but only when the connection is about to get saturated. What I don't like about the Comcast phone service is that their ancillary services are actually inferior to what I had with Sunrocket. Their voice mail management sucks, and the call history is not always available.

During one of my many insomniac episodes, I was channel surfing when I noticed that there was an infomercial for MagicJack. The beauty of the infomercial is that it was designed to sell the product without really explaining how it works, they just showed you to plug it into your PC, plug a phone into it and use it.

Pure genius.

The other thing is that the MagicJack is much smaller than the Sunrocket device, it is just a little box with an USB plug. People understand when you try to sell them a little box and very basic instructions.

You don't have to be a nerd, just take this box, plug it in, and you are done.

Now I am starting to see reports that they are actually making a killing selling the damn things. Broadband reports started a thread today about the subject, and you can see some more activity at Google News. The funny thing is how very few news outlets are questioning their momentum and if the company can actually make money. I guess we'll see.

I would have been tempted, but my employer just handed me a Cisco IP phone and a Cisco 851 router, so as long as that works without disrupting my home network it will probably leave the Comcast phone to be used for personal calls only.