Does this system work if the power goes out? Does it have a battery backup?

I've had the Ooma Hub for over two and one half years. I was fortunate also to buy a lifetime subscription for Premier services, so I have been paying no fees. I have saved a lot of money and never had a problem with my Ooma (except for one time when the whole system was out for a few hours and the demise of Ooma was being forecast).

However, I have run into a frustrating problem. I dropped my landline and have what they call a dry loop line. Verizon has told me the fastest DSL speed I can get with this is 1-3 mps. It is good enough, but when you have an Ooma, desktop, laptop, iPads, iPods, etc. all vying for the wireless signal, it is a problem. And, don't even think of setting up one of those neat streaming boxes often offered here and elsewhere.

So, my choice is to get the landline back and pay the cheapest possible (I think around $30) or continue the way it is now with the dry loop.

Other than this, love the Ooma!

Fax - dial *99 then the number - works like a charm! YMMV.

If you still have a landline through AT&T or your cable company, YOU NEED TO BUY THIS.

I paid $250 or so for it and I don't regret my decision at all. It paid for itself in 6 months.

Only recurring fee is $3.50 or so a month. I also opted for the $119/year Premier service because of the AWESOME integration with Google Voice...ported my local number to Google Voice when I got the Ooma and it is outstanding.

I cannot recommend this enough.

I have one and think it is worth while. I then got two more, one for my mom and one for my in laws. One liked it and one didn't. One had a bad time with the phone number port. Now here is the bad side. The one that didn't like it gave it back to me to return. Being that I got it from woot there are no returns. Therefore, I had to sell it. I was able to sell it on ebay for $120 but I found out later from the person who bought it that Ooma charges a $79.99 re-activation fee, ouch. So be sure you are a candidate for it or be fair buy it from somewhere which takes returns.

Doubles as a mouse pad! Just be careful which buttons you roll over while you're on a call.

My problem is that my computer connection is linked to my landline... How can I dump my landline, keep my DSL (through the phone company)? I'm old and it seems too complicated but SOOOOO inticiting! I WANT IT! Plus, is it a "service area" thing? I live in a tiny coastal town in Oregon. I barely have cell service! :-)

I have one of these acquired from Woot early this year. I love it! I pay $3.47 for taxes per month. I enjoyed several features of the Premium service they offer whe I had the free trial, but haven't ponied up the fee for that yet. (I just don't need the phone that much...) They had an offer for a free handset if you bought a year of service. Don't know if that's still valid. Except for the musical dial tone, I notice no difference between this and the cable company's phone. I use an answering machine with 4 cordless handsets plugged into this. It will definitely pay for itself over time. The Premium service offers call forwarding to your cell or any other line, call blocking, do not disturb feature, voicemails sent to your email- all really cool features that I don't need because I don't get many calls. One of my better impulse Woot buys!

KYoung0822 wrote:My problem is that my computer connection is linked to my landline... How can I dump my landline, keep my DSL (through the phone company)? I'm old and it seems too complicated but SOOOOO inticiting! I WANT IT! Plus, is it a "service area" thing? I live in a tiny coastal town in Oregon. I barely have cell service! :-)

Should work anywhere broadband internet is available. Not sure about DSL, but if you have a modem with a standard network plug, I don't see why not. Bandwidth could be an issue with some slower connections, but not DSL... I DID notice a better connection when I went from Time Warner Cable to Verizon FIOS. You can decide whether to hook it up BEFORE or AFTER your router in the setup.

KYoung0822 wrote:My problem is that my computer connection is linked to my landline... How can I dump my landline, keep my DSL (through the phone company)? I'm old and it seems too complicated but SOOOOO inticiting! I WANT IT! Plus, is it a "service area" thing? I live in a tiny coastal town in Oregon. I barely have cell service! :-)

Phone companies have to offer a DSL only service, its part of the regulations. AT&T charges $19.99 a month in my area for DSL as part of a combined phone plan, and it is $24.99 standalone. $24.99 isn't bad when you consider you are cutting $40 a month off your bill

dpacione wrote:Does this system work if the power goes out? Does it have a battery backup?

No, but neither does your cable phone, or cordless land line phone.

seachongo wrote:Can I use 3-4 or more handsets with the Telo? Any one know if that is possible with Obi?
Thanks.

We have the Ooma set up to use the phone wiring in our house to distribute the signal to every existing phone-jack that was there when we moved in. It is easy to find the details of how to do this on the web.

It's a great product. Bought one a while back and never had any problems. For those who are considering this over magic jack, I advise otherwise. Like everything mentioned before, there is a lot to be desired from magic jack. Plus Magic Jack doesn't offer numbers in a lot of areas compared to that of Ooma. The state I live in doesn't any numbers for Magic Jack but Ooma does and its local. I would check their listing if you go with Magic Jack.

Ooma is awesome! Connect it to your base unit and it works for all the phones in your house. Can work in front of or behind router, works with faxes, works when you're using your internet heavily, and is essentially free. (~$3 per month). Awesome.

OK, Oomites, I'm in.

I've been on Vonage since 2007, and since they picked up on the AT&T trick of adding junk fees to pad their bottom line, my $25 service has ballooned to $35. Enough.

I notice that Ooma has already started on the junk fees, they just haven't raised it to an art form yet. In my case, the $3.47/mo. (estimated per the website) includes $1.59 for "regulatory compliance" which is a junk fee (offsets their cost of doing business).

Otherwise, I'm excited to turn $35/mo into $3.50/mo and I appreciate the info from current users.

seachongo wrote:Can I use 3-4 or more handsets with the Telo? Any one know if that is possible with Obi?
Thanks.

Yep, works fine with multiple handsets as long as they are the type that only needs one of the bases plugged into the phone line. I bought one of these back in June and use it with 3 handset AT&T DECT 6.0 phones. Been saving money ever since. Works great.

dpacione wrote:Does this system work if the power goes out? Does it have a battery backup?

Not built in. But that was one of my requirements when I switched from a POTS line. I bought an inexpensive 350VA UPS just to cover the phone line. So it has Ooma, cordless phone, modem, router all hooked into the UPS. Those 4 things take very little juice to run, so I didn't bother with a high VA model.

seachongo wrote:Can I use 3-4 or more handsets with the Telo?

I have the Telo wired into my home wiring and it serves the whole house just fine. We haven't used more than 2 lines at once, but I don't think it will be an issue and it does ring all the phones.

dpacione wrote:Does this system work if the power goes out? Does it have a battery backup?

No, no battery backup - This runs thru your high speed internet connection. Unless your modem has a battery backup, your internet connection is down anyway until power is restored. That's when you pick up your cell phone and call the power company...

Bought mine about a year ago and haven't looked back. No problems whatsoever. Being able to blacklist numbers has been wonderful.

Many of the negative comments I've seen about the Ooma Telo appear to be from folks who did not care to elaborate on their experience. Like any other service that is dependent on a dedicated broadband Internet service, your milage may vary depending on the quality of your Internet connection and the integrity of your home network.

I guess I should buy the one from work for $49 then.

Does anyone know if this will work with a Verizon mi fi unit. This is my only internet option in the area where I live and it's pretty slow.

Dude, you're way too high here. Try about 100 watts c/w LCD monitor. That means your costs s.b closer to $90 per year. A 300 watt power supply doesn't mean that it uses 300 watts at 120V. It means it outputs 300 watts at 5V.

You had me scared for a minute!

Does this device have plugs for 2 wired telephones? I currently have one phone for personal use and one phone for business. Can I hook both up to this device, or would I need to get 2 of these - one for each phone line?

Just to be sure everyone understands what I am asking - I am not asking if I can have multiple handsets. I am asking if I can have two separate, distinct telephone lines with different telephone numbers hooked into one Ooma Telo device.

Currently, my Vonage device has 2 separate plugs in the back for 2 different telephones. In each of these lines, I have one of the 4-handset wireless DECT6.0 Panasonic systems. Each system uses a different ring tone. So, I have 4 wireless handsets for my personal telephone line and 4 wireless handsets for my business telephone line.

Can the Ooma Telo device do that? Looking at the back of the unit in the picture and reading on the Ooma website, I think it cannot.

I've had Ooma for about a year and love it. I unhooked my house phone wiring to the outside and now have the Telo running everything. I couldn't be more pleased for $3.50 a month.

I own three of these and I'd like to share my experience. One was purchased from Woot and the other two from a local store (COSTCO).

One of these works just fine (the one purchased from woot). Of the other two, the voice conversation breaks every 5 minutes or thereabouts I tried everything - talk to Ooma, talk to the internet service provider, use static and dynamic IPs, etc, etc. No solution. This has been going on for 4-5 months. Other VOIP solutions with the same internet provider and network, work just fine.

The voice quality is very good.

The expensive upgrades for extra features is somewhat negative. Another negative is that when you want to conference two lines, you have to be at the base station and press between the 1 and 2 on the Ooma unit. You cant do it from the handset by pressing flash. If you want to conference from the handset, I believe you have to buy the handsets from Ooma.

So whilst the quality is great and the running cost is low, there is a lot to pay if you want features such as call conferencing from the handset. And If I can't get the call dropping resolved soon, the two units will be returned.

Got one of these last one they were up. Tech support helped with an installation issue but it was pretty easy overall, even with the number port.

I was a bit bummed that they would not update dialing rules for me - they are forcing us to dial 7 digits within our own area code. If you dial 10th digits, the switch doesn't know what to do with the call and you get a fast busy....

Anyone else have a a workaround for this so it will dial properly with either 7 or 10 digits (or just 10 is fine) within your area code?

I bought one about a year ago on Woot for home phone. Figured it was worth trying since everyone at our house really uses cell phone now so if home line went out all we do is miss solicitation calls at dinner. Loved it. Worked great. Don't think it has ever gone down except when Comcast (the worst provider ever) goes down. Liked it so much I decided to get another one to use for my home office. Since I work out of my house, that is saying a lot. Even running 2 Oomas, I am doing fine. Occasionally a random tone sounds during a call and I have had a couple of bad connections but overall very happy. And it really does cost less than $5 per line per month.

It is worth a try.

Here is a question I have not seen.....

It says that you receive a free 2nd line/# if you sign up for the PREMIER service for a year.....How does this work if the TELO only has a single LINE jack in the back (as the other is for a line from the wall)??

I am considering changing over from VONAGE and my adapter has 2 jacks to allow to connect dual line phones (Which my AT&T Home phone is).

Anyone have information?? Do I need to have 2 TELO units to have Dual Lines outputted into my AT&T?

Have used Ooma for about 14 months now. Have more than recovered cost of the system plus $35 signup fee plus cost of new 4 phone wireless system, given a monthly phone bill of $3.50. Connected the Ooma unit directly to my DSL modem and then my wireless router connects to Ooma. Have had 1 major down of about 10 hrs during this period; unfortunately Ooma did not communicate this down very well by email or their toll-free number. Overall however, very pleased with phone service and sound quality. Porting from Qwest (now Centurylink) was very easy.

Do you have a home page? If I order the reverbished product, how do you upgrade to premier service options?

larenm wrote:Anyone have an Obi? For $1.50 you can get 911 service with the obi and it's cheaper. I'm not sure between the two.

The number of 5 Star reviews on Amazon for the Obihai
is impressive.

I think they are on to something.

Additional Shipping Note: Orders placed after 12:00 Noon CST will still ship Two-Day but are not guaranteed by Christmas.
--------------------

If you're buying this for christmas you better hurry up. You only have a couple hours left. Hopefully woot's twitter posts a last call for christmas shipping ~11:30

I used to be a big supporter, but my current view is much less supportive. My inlaws had nothing but problems, with voice drop-outs, unexpected call hang-ups, etc. I spent a couple of very frustrating hours on the phone with ooma level 1 support. They would not transfer me to Level 2. I eventually gave up. My inlaws finally decided just to eat the purchase price and switch. They are now much happier.

My wife also doesn't like our home system, and I have had problems when calling several other phones.

I have had much better luck with the obi, and would highly recommend that.

I am sure there are a lot of happy ooma customers. I have read many discussion forums, both here at woot and elsewhere. It seems that 5-10% or comments are very negative towards ooma. The rest are very positive. So you odds are good, but I have decided to retire our ooma.

johnkathy wrote:Does anyone know if you can take and use this if your a snowbird? We live in Illinois and go to south for the winter.

You can take the unit and plug it into any router anywhere you go and you'll get your home phone calls as if you were still in Illinois. You'll just need to take an ethernet cable and a telephone with you along with the Ooma box.

wankelrx8 wrote:Yes. Either buy a mult-handset cordless system, and just plug Ooma into the base station, OR, plug Ooma into one of your wall jacks to share throughout the house. That can also me done with Magic Jack and Vonage, but you should first disconnect your phone company's incoming power to the jacks. There's a junction box on the outside of your house where you disconnect this. Sorry, I can't explain how to do that, but if you Google it, you'll probably find answers.

If you are going to buy a new cordless phone to work with Ooma
make sure it has both DECT and bluetooth (for your cell phones)

More details on which model numbers a buried somewhere
on the Ooma forum.

Overall, I like this device and have been using it for about nine months. Two negatives I feel compelled to share -

(1) if you're breaking the ”triple play” with Comcrap like we were, you probably won't save as much as you might think, thanks to their fee structure increases for the remaining two items that you still need. It seriously only saves us like five bucks a month (yes, a very lengthy recovery of upfront costs). But some of my lack of savings may also have to do with me simultaneously getting rid of our cable box for a Ceton tuner ... it made for a very interesting phone call to be playing with these two variables at the same time.

(2) My bandwidth is extremely dynamic (older neighborhood, but still a lot of kids around). This becomes problematic when using QoS to make this the highest priority device. Using ddwrt, I basically need to estimate what my minimum bandwidth will look like, at which point QoS will make sure all of my other devices never use more than X% of. With my range of bandwidth at 1-15Mbps (yes, it's that bad, especially around holidays) the set-it-and-forget-it setting here would mean that all non-Ooma devices would collectively be limited to ~ 750Kbps. This is the only way that I can prevent my wife from complaining that the phone doesn't work (on occasion). The alternative, of course, is that I now more actively monitor my bandwidth and manually adjust this setting, to ensure good quality. Not fun, but better than constantly being blamed for having made our house a digital nightmare (I did mention that our two TVs now show cable TV through Xboxes/WMC and the aforementioned Ceton, right? ).

First, love the Woot deals. Thanks for the service. I hate being negative and this is much less than the regular Ooma price so thanks for that.

I hear the voice quality on the Ooma is good so that's a huge plus.

Last time I checked you could only got US calling - not North American calling. So I couldn't call home to Canada for free. So for me that's a deal breaker.

What about alternatives?

There's the NetTalk Duo (on sale $49.95 regular price $69.95) AND the MagicJack Plus ($69.96) both you can plug directly into the router with no need for a headset or computer... and BOTH are less than half this price.

Personally I use the MagicJack plus. Free 1 year service for $69. North America calling. Next year is $29 for a whole year's service.

If you want to go cheaper and you don't mind having your computer run 24/7 you can go regular Magicjack for $39.95 - extra year $19

Thanks for a deal anyway Woot!

seachongo wrote:Can I use 3-4 or more handsets with the Telo? Any one know if that is possible with Obi?
Thanks.

I plug my Ooma's output into a phone jack and it makes all other jacks in the house live. In my last apartment I used a $3 dollar two in one splitter because I needed a phone near the Ooma. If your talking about Dect 6 I'm not positive of the restrictions but I remember many people saying they were using panasonic Dect 6 phone systems without issue.

cocampbe wrote:You gotta be kidding me. My original telo died last week. I wasn't sure when woot would have another, so I picked one up at costco last night. Unreal. What are the odds?

Costco has an amazing return policy. Take the Ooma back?