The title is a paraphrase of Mark Twain, in response to rumors of his demise. Now we know how he felt.
Over the past few days, FreedomVoice has been getting quite a few rather shocking phone calls and emails, inquiring about our financial condition. Turns out, another unrelated telecom company named Freedom Communications USA declared bankruptcy in Tennessee last week. Due to the likeness of our names, a lot of people thought we were the ones filing for Chapter 11. Negative.
Before I go on, let me make it clear: we’re not the “Freedom” telecom company going bankrupt. And we’ve been through this before. We appreciate your concern, but we want you to know we’re doing better than ever.
How Did This Happen?
It’s all in the danger of nicknames. Many in our industry like to refer to us simply as “Freedom” instead of FreedomVoice. We don’t mind, usually. It means customers and partners are comfortable enough and familiar enough with us, our products, and our brand that they don’t need to identify us by our more lenghty title. Like “Coke,” only on a smaller scale and with no high fructose corn syrup.
Problems come along, however, when other companies in our industry start to get a taste of the same treatment. What “Freedom”-this and “Freedom”-that are doing starts getting muddled with what we’re up to, and we have to pull out the oars and fend off rumors of mergers, acquisitions, and bankruptcies as having nothing to do with us. I’m not saying this is an everyday occurrence, but it certainly happens more frequently than one might expect. And we can’t rightfully ignore something like people thinking we’re pushing daisies.
I’m Getting Better!
Now that this is behind us, you’ll be happy to know we’re hard at work improving FreedomIQ service. While we’re doing terrifically well, we’ve never been a company content to rest on our laurels. There are a number of amazing improvements and innovations, large and small, on the horizon. Hopefully we’ll be able to share some of these soon.
There’s not much more to be said, so I thought I’d leave you with a few more famous examples of mistaken demise.
Enjoy.
