I’m confused, can you end a fiscal year only a few months into the calender year? Can someone explain to me how this works please? Can Packet8 be ending 2008’s year now, or is this a typo in their press release?

GAAP net income for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008 was $691,000 or $0.01 per share, compared with a loss of $2.9 million, or ($0.05) per share for the same period last year. Operating income for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008 was $695,000, the company’s first reported operating income since the inception of the Packet8 business. Operating cash flow for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008 was $420,000 and $3 million for all of fiscal 2008. The company ended its 2008 fiscal year with no debt and cash and investments of $14.6 million, an increase of approximately $2.6 million from the end of fiscal 2007.

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According to a story over at Twice, Packet8 is offering voice over IP phone service software for your cell phone through their new service called MobileTalk. Just download the software and install it on your cell phone, and then, when you make international calls, the calls will be routed over Packet8’s VoIP system, saving you tons of money by not putting the calls through your cell phone provider. While you will still have to count your minutes, they will be charged as in-county minutes by your cell phone company, and not out of country minutes. Visit Packet8’s MobileTalk for more information and to see a list of their current international rates.

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8×8 announced today that they cut an exclusive deal with a broadband phone service provider that is going out of business. Unlike the big screw-up with SunRocket, the-as-yet-unnamed-company (Tayuc) is going to phase their service and customers out slowly, while they are [hopefully] being ported over to Packet8. This is a nice touch, considering the fiasco that was caused when SunRocket just shut their doors and walked away without telling anyone what was going on.

The exclusive deal being offered to Tayuc’s customer’s will included special monthly pricing, a free month of service and a free Uniden router/phone combination. Of course, if you go to their website now, and follow the directions, you can already get most of that special Packet8 deal right now, including the free Uniden router phone and the free month of VoIP service.

If you followed the Teleblend/Packet8 wrestling match, which involved 200,000+ old SunRocket customers, you know that after SunRocket closed it’s doors it cut a deal with Packet8 and Teleblend to pay SunRocket a fee for any of SunRocket’s old customers that converted to either Packet 8 or Teleblend. Read the 4th paragraph of the Packet8 press release where they mention that SunRocket chose them to continue VoIP service to SunRocket’s more than 200,000 customer. It’s just worth a little chuckle that they fail to mention that they were “One of Two Companies” chosen to handle the transition. I guess it’s just human nature to try to make yourself look better than you are. LOL

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I was reading the news releases over on 8×8.com today, and they just got another patent. I don’t know what the patent does, because it looks like the person who wrote the press release didn’t know what it did either, or they didn’t want to give too much information away.

Let’s see if I can describe what the new patent is about…… I recognized the word “Voice”, but that’s about it. Does anyone know what anything in this statement means?

The invention covered by the patent relates generally to speech signal processing and, more specifically, to multi-pulse speech analysis and synthesis systems. According to certain embodiments, the invention provides a speech processing method and arrangement including a process applicable for use in connection with various standard speech encoding recommendations. Certain embodiments of the invention are also applicable to multipulse, maximum likelihood quantization coding systems and processes.

Oh, wait, if they would have just explained that, “Certain embodiments of the invention are also applicable to multipulse, maximum likelihood quantization coding systems and processes“, then it would have cleared up a lot of my confusion early on in the paragraph. Now I know exactly what the product, uh process, uh, thingy…. does. LOL

If you want to see if you can figure it out and come back here and tell the rest of us, the news release is located here.

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I saw a little blurb by Olga Kharif, over at BusinessWeek.com, that shows that I need to spend a little more time digging into my articles before I post them, But where’s the fun in that?

According to Olga’s article, Packet8’s profit was due to a one time accounting event, and Inphonex another broadband phone company, is actually making a profit according to the information on the company’s News page.

In other words, Packet8 isn’t the first internet phone company to make a profit, and since the profit was due to accounting benefits instead of an increase in customers or revenue, then it shouldn’t be construed as the big deal everyone was making it out to be. Read the article by Deborah McAdams, from FierceVoip.com, for more information.

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Packet8’s parent company, 8×8, Inc., announced today that for the first time in the history of Packet8, they made a profit last quarter. This is exciting and very cool, because they are the first stand alone VOIP company to do so. None of the other purely VOIP companies have been able to do that so far, including Vonage and SunRocket, who were the big players in the broadband phone service market.

While I’m sure that cable companies like Charter and Comcast have been able to make a profit selling VOIP phone service, they have been able to do so only because of their low cost of acquisition. Since they already have a huge customer base in the cable and high speed internet industry, all they would need to do would be to bundle their VOIP offering with a sweet deal on cable television and high speed broadband internet service to pick up extra phone customers at a fraction of what it costs a stand alone VOIP company.

Here’s the pertinent part of the press release from PRnewswire.com:

For the first time since the Company launched its Packet8 VoIP service in November 2002, 8×8 posted GAAP net income of $508,000, or $0.01 per share, compared to a net loss of $2.9 million, or ($0.05) per share for the previous quarter and $1.8 million, or ($0.03) per share for the same period of fiscal 2007. In addition, the Company posted a $284,000 increase in cash and investments for the first fiscal quarter compared to a $492,000 reduction in cash and investments during the previous quarter and a $5.2 million reduction in cash and investments during the same period of fiscal 2007, improving its balance sheet to approximately $12.2 million in cash and investments with no debt.

Total revenues for the first quarter of fiscal 2008 increased to $14.7 million compared to $14.4 million for the previous quarter, and $12.3 million for the same period of fiscal 2007, an increase of 20%. Packet8 Virtual Office revenue grew sequentially by 23% over the previous quarter, while residential revenue declined 5%. Gross margins grew to 64%, up from 54% in the previous quarter, and Packet8 service margins grew to 70% from 62% in the previous quarter.

Some of you may be thinking, “so, what’s the big deal?” The big deal is that now we know that a stand alone VOIP company can live in the current market environment. That means that VOIP is now a mainstream possibility for the United States and the world. Which means, now we know that Vonage could do it too if they followed the example set forth by Packet8, instead of that of SunRocket. They need to concentrate on business customers, add on PBX solutions and video phone capabilities. While Packet8 does save money by not having to pay VOIP related royalties like Vonage and the other’s do, they also spend way more time trying to acquire business based customers; something Vonage hasn’t done very well.

I’m actually really happy for Packet8, I’ve used their products for my business and home, and they did a good job providing a decent service at a fair price. While it looks like Vonage and SunRocket reverted to the spending patterns of the DOT.COM’s in the 90’s stock collapse fiasco, Packet8 has kept their spending and pricing within reasonable bounds in an attempt to grow profits instead of just trying for a high customer count. A high customer count is fine if you make a $1 off of each one every month, but it looks like Vonage has been losing at least $50.00 per customer for a long time (see earlier post). In that scenario, it hurts their bottom line every time they sign up a new customer; not a very good business practice.

Now that we have a VOIP company capable of making money while offering service at a fair price, people should start migrating to them because of their strength. Why sign up with a company that looks like it might go under, or one like Teleblend, that you’ve never heard of, when there’s a VOIP company in the black. If I was an ex SunRocket user, I would sign up with Packet8 right now! At least this company looks like it has the strength to be able to provide customers with service without shutting it’s doors some afternoon and leaving it’s customers scrambling for service.

If you’re worried about the long term health of your broadband phone company, then go sign up with Packet8 right now!

Spiderman

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Samantha Chandola, over at VoipGuides.Blogspot.com, put up an article with lots of information about Packet8. If you are interested in knowing more about them, you should, then read her article. And, you should be interested in them if you are an old Sunrocket customer and are looking for a new home for your VoIP phone Service. You can read her article about Packet8 here.

If you want to compare that to what Teleblend has to say, then make sure you read the article below about Teleblend and their parent company USA Telecom, AKA: Unified Communications Corp. from Singapore.

Drop me a line if you have any questions or know any answers to the Sunrocket, Packet8, Teleblend mess that is currently going on.

Oh, by the way, according to Lisa at Teleblend, you need to move your SunRocket number by tomorrow, July 22, 2007 of you want to make sure it will keep working. I don’t know if this is just a marketing ploy on their part or if that is when Sunrocket’s voip network is scheduled to go down for good.

Spiderman

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Packet8 just posted this totally funny graphic on their website. While it may seem a little cruel to make fun of the death of SunRocket, welcome to the wonderful world of cut-throat voip telecom.

Signup for Packet8

(more…)

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On July 13, 2007, Packet8 announced that it would begin offering recording services to companies that subscribe to it’s virtual office internet PBX phone service. Packet8 will be using Holdcom to provide the technology needed to offer these services to their business customers.

The voice services that they are offering will include message on hold, voice prompt production and voice mail greetings in a wide range of languages and dialects. Additional services such as on hold music and announcements for retail and business applications are also available through a special arrangement with Holdcom. (more…)

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