The NY Times reports that Vienna, VA-based SunRocket has halted operations. SunRocket’s customer base is (or make that was) second only to Vonage among pure Internet VoIP providers. Let the great VoIP consolidation event of 2007 commence. Which VoIP providers stand to benefit most from the demise of the company best known for its $199 annual VoIP Plan?

Vonage is the first that comes to mind, of course… if only because of its ever-present marketing blitz. But I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that Vonage will not be the ultimate landing spot for those displaced VoIP subscribers… for one basic reason.

A significant portion of SunRocket’s customer base were once Vonage customers. Would a person who left Vonage - for whatever reason - want to return? On the other hand, this could be good news for the small VoIP providers like BroadVoice, Lingo, Packet8, and VoicePulse.

And then there are the monoliths of the ISP and telcom world …

Could this be AOL’s opportunity to vacuum up cheap VoIP customers for pennies on the marketing dollar? This one’s a wild card, but there might a lot to be said for neighborly intentions. Perhaps this is Earthlink’s opportunity to quickly acquire a big chunk of customers in one fell swoop.

Will AT&T or Verizon swing their mighty hammers? There’s more than a good bit of difference in pricing plans between the two; who’s to say that a sweet deal couldn’t be worked out for subscribers to jump? It would be chump change for giants like AT&T and Verizon.

Consolidation was inevitable in the VoIP world. SunRocket’s flame out won’t be the last.

The ultimate winners just might end up being the big cable companies … Comcast has been pushing its VoIP service as part of a triple play (TV, Internet, and VoIP) with a raft of advertising that includes airplane banners to attract summer vacationers at the beach.

SunRocket’s new user registration forms were still active as of this writing.

[tags]VoIP[/tags]