Ooma
 

So who here has been testing Ooma and has tokens to share?

From WSJ:

Ooma is a piece of hardware that you plug it into your Internet connection and attach a phone, and you get free, unlimited domestic calls, local or long distance, as long as you keep your Ooma.

WSJ article link (may require paid subscription)

hum, would love to see more info on it and to see how well it really works.

Sounds a lot like Magicjack:

http://www.magicjack.com/site/index.html

The Ooma and Magicjack do sound similar. The positioning is different. Ooma is positioned more as a dedicated home device that easily integrates into the existing home wiring setup while Magicjack is more portable focused.

Both deserve a second look I think.

$400 upfront for lifetime unlimited calls?

Fish > smells.

I think the events of this week with Sunrocket have shown that the market is very vulnerable. Nobody is really making any real money here so promises like this sound very hard to keep.

The upfront costs are way too high I think for it to be realistic, at least for me.

There are many penny or two penny a minute usa to usa calling deals out there.

$400, that's 40,000 minutes of calling for this to pay for itself.

Free nights and weekends on cells, there's lots of reasons that's way too much money for something that probably won't be around that long.

Ooma in trouble?

http://valleywag.com/377932/ashton-k...-falling-apart

I feel stupid for doubting Ooma - got one this afternoon, and I think this is the future of the landline. The company is still around, doing better than ever, the hardware is half what it was a year ago, and the product is rock solid.

I'm very intrigued by this!

http://www.broadbandreports.com/comments/3322

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Oooma is Dead, Alive, Dead, Alice, unsustainable... it will be interesting to watch this one.

I never did buy as I took the T-Mo @home route for the $10 a month for unlimited local/long distance (USA).

I still don't like products that leach off my bandwidth, and route their traffic across my network. My VUDU gets pretty much unplugged when not in use, or throttled substantially in order to contain it.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry9000/4.6.0.167 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

Saw the product @ Costco... Interesting-
There was a rep there but I was in a hurry so I could not ask him a lot of questions...

They were demoing it with a cell card :cool:

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A400 Safari/528.16)

Big fan here. Have been using it since December. Ported my Verizon # over and haven't looked back. Great sound quality and zero perceptible impact on my broadband connectivity. (RoadRunner standard 5mb service).

Question: I know for initial setup, one would be advised to hook the Ooma directly to the modem or the router.

My question is once that is done, would it be possible to use the Ooma by connecting it to the ethernet jack of a wireless range extender (like the latest Linksys versions), or a WAP in bridge mode from a WAP connected to the router?

It may be inconvenient to have the Ooma adjacent to either the router or the cable modem (given where the cable comes into the house) and would be much nicer to have it in a more accessible place.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry9000/4.6.0.167 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

Guessing this is a technological question if it would work...

Not certain w/o looking @ the unit... But if it remembers the settings like a router can to initiate DSL... Perhaps-

Of course if they had a wireless unit... That would solve the issue (:p)

But how would wifi impact latency? (That's my biggest question)

I just finished testing it, and it works like a charm.

My internet setup is a little "different." Because the cable company wouldn't come to the house, but would come to a building 600 feet away, I have the cable modem there with the following setup:

Building One: Modem --> Router --> WAP --> Directional antenna

House: 2nd WAP in bridge mode --> various laptops and print servers.

For the heck of it, I plugged the Ooma hub into the ethernet port on the 2nd WAP. It connected and was working beautifully within 30 seconds.

Then I read the directions :D

The perfect order :p

Glad its working for you!

Ooma reliability? Fax?
 

I picked one of these up at Costco a week ago. The idea is interesting, but not sure if it will work for me.

I have my business in my house, and currently use a Cable provided main phone and additional fax number. Surprisingly, I get little use out of the fax number these days, but have had the number out there so long, that I'm sure I'd lose out if I changed or canceled it.

For some reason, Cox has a much cheaper price if you only have one phone in the bundle compared to two. So this one fax line adds $30 a month to my bill. I'd like to use Ooma to connect to my fax machine. I wouldn't mind being able to use the free domestic minutes, but if I called someone and the caller ID listed the fax number, they might call me back on it, instead of my normal business number. Can I have a different number listed for CID purposes?

If my high speed (25 meg) internet service was perfect, I'd use it for my main number. However, it always seems that I'm down for an hour, or two ever month, and then there is a day long outage every year or two. If it's on the weekend, I wouldn't care much, but during the week it would cost me big.

And if the whole service shut down, then I'd be SOL.

It sounds like you have plenty of bandwidth, but you should know that VoIP is not a great solution for faxing in situations where there are any flaws in the broadband connection. VoIP's little blips and burps that are slightly bothersome in a voice connection can wreak havoc on a fax connection. I used to do tech support for a VoIP company and this issue came up a lot.

Have you considered getting a fax machine that supports distinctive ringing and just let your fax line share your voice line from its own number? I have distinctive ring service from AT&T for my fax line for a couple of bucks a month (less that $5, I forget the exact amount).

I found out in my own pre-purchase research that Ooma has a section of its website devoted to support for faxing. Fax call dialing needs to include a special prefix. The prefix tells the device to select a special high-bandwidth codec which is better for faxing, since it doesn't compress the audio on the calls.

http://www.ooma.com/fax

Verizon customers?
 

Have the folks out there who are Verizon customers had any problems unhooking their DSL service from their phone bills in order to ditch the phone service?

Costco is still selling the Ooma... which is not necessarily a bad thing. Any updates on experiences?

Without exaggerating - Ooma is the best home phone product I have ever used. And I was in the first couple of 100's users on Vonage. I've been on Sunrocket, Magicjack and many others - but Ooma is just fantastic.

I would completely agree. ScottC put me on to it, and it's been flawless.

We've had our Ooma for a year. No problems at all. We have had two friends buy them also.

We have Verizon FIOS, and they sort of don't like you having internet but no phone service. They won't bill you direct anymore, only through your credit card. But then again, that might earn more miles. ;) I haven't noticed any change in our bandwidth.

I didn't go with magic jack because the Ooma works in two rooms with a main unit and remote, and also works just like an answering machine. We love having free caller ID now also, as we never wanted to pay for it before. We paid the extra $40? to keep our old number.

I am somewhat concerned about the business model also, but after a year, it's now paid for itself.

Ooma is great, okay I said it. but, it isn't perfect. I have had a couple outages in the past two years and I would say in the past few MONTHS I am getting a BIT more choppy voice sound every once in a while. Also, I have had a couple of disconnects. Granted, in the grand scheme of usage this is about .05% or less. It was WAY worse in the early days and I didn't like the fact it was using onese landline (if one had one) but this is of course over.

I also don't like the new DECT phones, too much EF noise in the house, but I use my own cordelss 5.8ghz phoens.

If you can get an older model, that is the deal, I paid 135$ for my second unit, with of course lifetime, no fee unlimited services.

There are several of the older ones on eBay for not very much money; same with CL nationwide.

FYI
 

just an fYI, I think one has to activate for the FIRST TIME one of the older units to have no fees ever. Otherwise, there might be the 12$ a year annual fee (which is some sort of tax) AND possible some charge for voicemail.

OOma changed their business model starting in October 2009, which some grandfathering occuring to 1/1/2010 and some legacy granting for "older units" and legacy customers.

I have been looking to pick up an Ooma and noticed different models.

The Teleo is the one with yearly fees (per ScottC in another thread).

For the unit without fees, do I get the Ooma Hub, the Ooma Core or some combination thereof?

Just want to make sure I purchase the right product.

technically at this point in the ooma history there is only one model, the teleo - the BLACK ONE. One CAN get the older Core model THE WHITE ONE and sometimes a Core plus SCOUT bundle at costco, and online, but I THINK that even a NEW but UNSOLD CORE is going to carry a yearly fee, per their new model. if one CAN get an older and I believe activated CORE model, the WHITE one, then I think it carries the older "no fees" pricing. And, I have heard people getting boxes that have the older "no fees" packaging, activating them and managing to get the NO FEES service. None of this applies to the TELEO though.

The TELEO is nice, but remember it is DECT 6.0, which many don't like or want.

You can find the old ones, used, on Craiglist. Use something like allofcraigslist.com

On the Ooma support forum, the Ooma people refer to the no-fee version of the Core as the "golden ticket" model. They're becoming more scarce all the time.

IMO, that's OK. No-fee was not a sustainable business model, since the company was absorbing over $3/month/customer in government taxes and fees. It was a great way to make an initial marketing splash. :cool:

There are four of them on CL right now, with asking prices as little as $125.

Good to know, I'll have to check out craigslist. I've been planning on buying one for a while now, guess I better hurry up while they're still available.

Ooma iPhone app
 

Got an email from Ooma this morning about its iPhone app

http://www.ooma.com/products/ooma-iphone-app

Trying to figure out who this app is aimed at. I don't think it is me.... I never come close to using all my domestic cell minutes each month and currently have 1000+ rollover minutes.

I am thinking that this is primarily aimed at international callers?

I'd enjoy trying it out (and assume calls made through this would show one's Ooma caller i.d.) but not for $9.95 for the app.

As an Ooma customer, I'm disappointed that calls to the US on the iPhone app cost money, since the app is not free. That's inconsistent with the free calling model of Ooma devices. I would have expected it would be a simple matter for the company to provide those minutes as a perq of having an Ooma device account.

I think the idea for the app is that YOUR NUMBER will ring to the app, so if you depend on your number you can have your calls route seamlessly there. Here, there, in China whereever. The pricing is a bit more than skype and they don't currently offer a monthly domestic free service (for a small fee of course) other than premier membership.

Can someone dumb this down for me? It took one month (no exaggeration) for Ooma to respond to my e-mail inquiries. I have some other questions, but have read about their lousy customer service.

I'm interested in Ooma, but am fuzzy on some things:

- I have two lines into my home (I work from home). If I want to use the existing phones for my residential line (two of them) and my single business phone, do I need to purchase two units?

- Besides the taxes and a slicker look, what is the difference between the Core and the Telo

- Is anyone nervous about how three Ooma executives being either fired or replaced this year?

I once called them, and got someone on the phone right away, who took care of my issue immediately and followed up in an email. No experience with emailing a question.

You can use a single unit with two lines, but be careful with business calls - they don't like them. If you stay low on the minutes, you'll be fine.

The differences are minimal - but the Telo comes with a monthly tax, so when possible, stick with the original. It'll lack slick stuff like Bluetooth, but works perfectly.

I don't care about management changes - they seem to be selling plenty of them, it has seriously never been down for me, which is more than I can say for most other VOIP services.