Ooma
My Ooma Telo and I have been together for a few weeks now, and I’m happy to say we are still in the honeymoon period. Let me start at the beginning. We met when Ooma arrived from Amazon (~$200) and we hit it off right away. The setup was very easy…I just went to ooma.com and activated the device using the serial number on the back. I picked a phone number in the local “720″ area code, plugged an ethernet cable into my DSL modem/router/switch and then plugged a phone into the Ooma. I had a dial tone right away and was making free long distance calls in minutes. Mary and I already had home phone service from Qwest, so I went on the Ooma website and paid $40 to initiate a transfer of our old number from Qwest. That process took about three weeks and it was completed yesterday. Ooma does warn that if you have DSL and a home phone your service may be interrupted when the transfer completes, but we had no trouble. I called Qwest after the transfer and they had automatically removed our home phone service from our account.
It was pretty simple to get all of our old phones working with Ooma. We just disconnected the outside phone line from the internal house phones and then plugged the Ooma into a phone jack. All of the phones in the house just worked as they always had, with the exception of the melodic sound at the beginning of the dial tone. I should note that DSL users need to have a separate physical line coming into the house for phone and internet, or if you have a newer house with separate phone and internet junction boxes, just plug the outside phone line into your modem directly. If you have a cable modem, you just have to disconnect the outside phone line and you are good to go. Okay, so I admit this could be a bit arduous for those with DSL.
Ooma has no month-to-month fee. You get free US long distance and cheap international calls (well, I think they are cheap as I actually don’t price international calling very often). They will try to get you to buy their premium service for $10/month, but I don’t think any of the features are must-haves. You still get voice mail and caller ID without the premium service. The call quality seems very good so far and there are options to tweak QoS packet tagging to prioritize voice packets over standard data packets on your network. (If you didn’t understand that last sentence be happy because you aren’t a computer nerd. If you did and want details click here.) Also, our security system and old SD DVR — which use old-school dial-up technology to send and receive info — still work with Ooma. Also, you can check your voicemail from the Ooma web page or from your phone.
The drawbacks are fairly minimal. They use E-911, so as long as you register your home address during activation 911 will know where you are without having to tell them in the middle of a crisis. Just remember to update your address if you move. Also, if your power goes out or you lose your internet service for another reason Ooma won’t work. You probably have a cell phone so that isn’t a huge deal. The bottom line is that if you already have broadband internet and a home phone it is probably time to switch to some type of VoIP as services like Ooma, Vonage, Magic Jack, etc. are called. If you are currently paying $30/month for a home phone, the $240 investment in Ooma will start paying off after 8 months. The only other small worry I have is the stability of the company. You never know how well a random internet company will manage their cash flow. They could also get themselves into an AT&T-iPhone scenario and not be able to keep up with demand for services if Ooma becomes wildly popular. If they were smart and have their infrastructure managed externally or within one of the ubiquitous cloud services like Amazon EC2, then they will easily be able to handle the growth from an infrastructure standpoint.
So, all in all my relationship with Ooma is great so far and only time will tell if the love affair continues.
Update January 31, 2010.
First, Ooma will charge you ~$12 per year in taxes, but this is paid the first year. Second, I have had some trouble playing voice mail back via the web interface on a couple occasions. Third, my dad just bought an Ooma Telo from Amazon and Ooma had failed to load the activation code/MAC address into their system, so he had to call, open a trouble ticket, and wait a few days to get it activated. Ooma has a very good product, but the company seems to be going through some growing pains and may be having a hard time handling their growth. I suspect they will get it together, but it may be a bumpy road for a bit.