philgonet wrote:Moving my 80+ year old parents to live near us and thought this might be a good option for them for their (new) phone service. Especially like the 'free long distance' since they are leaving lots of friends behind 600 miles away. I do have a few questions though:
1) can this run off a wireless router or does it really need a CAT connection to be crisp/clear?
2) how are the taxes/fees billed? Do they send you a monthly bill or do you pay by the quarter etc.? What about the international calling fees?
3) how 'effortless' will this be for them? Will they even know it's there as long as they don't have an internet or power interruption?
4) do you need to dial the area code in your 'home' area?
5) can you use a 'dial around' service such as OneSuite (for long distance calls to Europe for instance) or does it have trouble with that process (not sure if they still have credit with OneSuite that may need using up...)
6) if your internet goes down do you need to 're-boot' the unit when it comes back up to re-establish a connection or does it perform that task automagically?

So basically in other words... how 'elder friendly' is this as a phone option?
Thanks for the input!

1. Wired LAN required.
2. Monthly, directly billed to credit card.
3. May occasionally need to reboot unit (power off/on). Funky Ooma dialtone.
4. 7-digit dialing works fine. Will need to prefix long distant calls with a "1" (can be optionally disregarded with some dialing delay).
5. ???
6. It's usually automatic. Takes about 5 minutes after internet is restored. Status lights on unit let you know when there is a problem.

tc1uscg wrote:I have used the Magicjack and now MJ-Plus. Like the service. Just wish you could adjust the voice mail option off or on without 3rd party SIP software. But I have 2 wireless base stations in my house (basement and 1st floor). In my basement, I have a punch down block where it feeds all the phone jacks in the house. Pulled off the telephone companies feed and plugged in the wire that feeds the MJ in my office. This gave me a direct link from the MJ to the INPUT to the block. Now, the MJ provides dial tone to all the jacks in the house. Got the MJplus for 40 bucks because I already had a older MJ (I needed two anyway). So, I paid 60 bucks for 5 years worth of service when I got my MJ. It's already paid for itself. What people fail to realize too is your at the mercy of your network. If it's down, you phone is down. Unless you roll your inbound calls to your cell. In the end, I have 2 base stations and 7 additional wireless phones spread through out the house, 2 wired phones also.

As mentioned above the important thing to remember is to disconnect the telco connection from your inside wiring before you feed the Ooma signal on your inside phone wiring. This is made much more complicated if your network connection is DSL since it is very likely your telco uses the same connection for both voice and data. Cable Tv and fiber based internet connections are much easier since they are on different connections.

With DSL you can still do it, but you would probably want to put the dsl signal on the outside pair (a standard phone jack has 4 wires - the 'inside pair' which is the primary connection, and the 'outside pair' which was most commonly used for a second phone number), then reverse the pairs at the jack where the dsl modem is connected and you would be good to go!

ashah1111 wrote:This sounds great, but what if we have 6 cordless phones throughout the house? According to what I'm reading I can only connect one phone like to this.

I have 7 phone instruments in the house and all works perfectly on Ooma. It took a simple moving of one wire from a to b at the phone box (I called an AT&T repairman to do it, and amazingly, they never charged me for that). I can't recommend the Ooma any higher - it is the best!

Obi box for $50 @ Amazon + Google Voice = Free phone service. No taxes...nothing. Been using it for over a year with no problems. (Do not have to keep a PC connected, no Credit Card on file.)

ashah1111 wrote:This sounds great, but what if we have 6 cordless phones throughout the house? According to what I'm reading I can only connect one phone like to this.

www.vikingelectronics.com/products/pdf/rg-10a.pdf

jerryb2339 wrote:I have 7 phone instruments in the house and all works perfectly on Ooma. It took a simple moving of one wire from a to b at the phone box (I called an AT&T repairman to do it, and amazingly, they never charged me for that). I can't recommend the Ooma any higher - it is the best!

Simply disconnect the 2 main wires from the red and green wires from the phone box (usually outside or in a basement) to isolate your system from the phone company system. Be sure to keep all the red and green wires connected together as they originally were.

Just switched from Vonage - loving Ooma! Voice quality is great and it works with my home fax across Charter cable modem. Haven't plugged into the Premier features yet but I don't really need them. I paid $139 for this on Woot a couple of months back so at $99 this is a STEAL!!!

philgonet wrote:Moving my 80+ year old parents to live near us and thought this might be a good option for them for their (new) phone service. Especially like the 'free long distance' since they are leaving lots of friends behind 600 miles away. I do have a few questions though:
1) can this run off a wireless router or does it really need a CAT connection to be crisp/clear?
2) how are the taxes/fees billed? Do they send you a monthly bill or do you pay by the quarter etc.? What about the international calling fees?
3) how 'effortless' will this be for them? Will they even know it's there as long as they don't have an internet or power interruption?
4) do you need to dial the area code in your 'home' area?
5) can you use a 'dial around' service such as OneSuite (for long distance calls to Europe for instance) or does it have trouble with that process (not sure if they still have credit with OneSuite that may need using up...)
6) if your internet goes down do you need to 're-boot' the unit when it comes back up to re-establish a connection or does it perform that task automagically?

So basically in other words... how 'elder friendly' is this as a phone option?
Thanks for the input!

woottoady wrote:1. Wired LAN required.
2. Monthly, directly billed to credit card.
3. May occasionally need to reboot unit (power off/on). Funky Ooma dialtone.
4. 7-digit dialing works fine. Will need to prefix long distant calls with a "1" (can be optionally disregarded with some dialing delay).
5. ???
6. It's usually automatic. Takes about 5 minutes after internet is restored. Status lights on unit let you know when there is a problem.

Thanks for the info. Now if I can just get some sort of 'elder use' confirmation I would be ready to pull the trigger ...

Have an Ooma Hub already, and would like to upgrade to the Telo for remote DTMF support (to be able to access our home voice mail remotely) and improved fax support. Does anyone know if there are any costs moving from the Hub to Telo (other than the purchase cost)?

Have been waiting for one of these.

Hmm...$30 more at Costco gets me new unit with 2 yr warranty (Costco AMEX adds 1 yr) and Costco return policy. Here, saves me $30 but only 6 mo warranty, refurb, no Costco backup. A toss up, kind of. Decisions...

Just get a MagicJack

ckeilah wrote:If you have been paying your telco a fee, which almost all of them charge you, for number portability, then they are legally obliged to port your number. They will probably charge you another fee, and you may be able to sue them in small claims court for fraud, or they may refuse to port the number, and you'll have to sue them in civil court for contract and regulatory violations. Do whatever it takes to get out of business with jerks like that! ;-)

Completely agree. Call Armstrong and with authority state that you are well aware they cannot keep your number, "legally obligated" <-- I like that. I hate telcom.

BTW, LOVE your siggy line - too bad so many people love your posts!!

For those looking for an alternative to Vonage/Ooma/VoIP, look up Obi110. Less than $50, and never a fee with Google voice.

dalejohnston wrote:I'm not sure this is a very good value. It's basically a VoIP service, like many others, with a couple of differences: Not only do you have to pay an expected subscription fee (which is higher than one particular VoIP provider who claims to have some kind of "magic"), most other VoIP providers have more features AND charge little or nothing for the necessary equipment. There is also a significant danger of this small company going out of business, rendering their service useless. DO YOUR RESEARCH BEFORE COMMITTING TO BUY!

I did my research. Bought one here over a year back at a higher price. Service has been great. I have saved over $240 in the last year.

The monthly "fee" people keep mentioning are taxes. Mine is $3.47 a month.

Those that keep mentioning magic and other Voip devices that plug into your computer, they only work when your computer is on!

This works as long as you have power and decent internet. Free long distance inside the US, and very reasonable fees outside the US.

If you still have a land line this is the way to go. Every jack in my house works.

At this price it is even more attractive.

For those of you pitching Google Voice (and the cheaper Obi system, for example), don't forget that you signed off your privacy rights when you agreed to use Google Voice. Some people, out of sheer principle, don't want their calls to be open to data mining and who knows what else.

You know, even though I'm in the IT world, and responsible for our telecom at work, I've never looked at one of these devices for home. Right now I'm using Comcast cable TV/Internet/phone - and of course when you bundle it, it's cheaper than just cable TV/internet.

I don't know what to do, and I don't have lots of time to research this. Dang.

I was going to start using Google voice, but from what some of you are saying, Google voice and this product can work together but GV does not replace this/landline.

Question: I was told that if I port my landline# to GV, I'm done with landline fees. So this isn't the case?

I have a landline that I've held onto for "safety" in case one of our 2 cell phones doesn't work when there is an emergency, AND (mostly) because many have that phone# -- like doctor's offices. To find all the people who have that number would be a nightmare.

ps: sorry to ask YOU all for the research I should have done/ be doing - appreciate the help. Great community of knowledgeable people here. Maybe too much so - I've purchased lots and LOTS of wonderful gadgets/tech stuff since joining Woot. But yes, I'm better for it

TIA!

chi_tom wrote:You can only plug one phone into it. However, if you have a cordless phone system that has only one base with several remote phones that don't plug into jacks, it will work fine.

If you use an old-fashioned splitter, you can plug in more than one phone. The downside is that for each cordless base station you plug in, you need an additional power outlet nearby.

I have not had landline for probably 8 years now. Just cell phones. Was recently thinking about getting a landline or something like this as a backup to the cell.

My router is in a closet in my basement. He's not ready to come out yet, so it's not exactly convenient for a phone setup. How hard is it to set this up to where my phone jacks work throughout the house so the actual OOMA can be somewhere obscure?

Thanks.

mbrickell wrote:Have been waiting for one of these.

Hmm...$30 more at Costco gets me new unit with 2 yr warranty (Costco AMEX adds 1 yr) and Costco return policy. Here, saves me $30 but only 6 mo warranty, refurb, no Costco backup. A toss up, kind of. Decisions...

For me, with my ignorance about this product/technology, I'd have to go with Costco. Even if not for my ignorance (ignorance=not knowledgeable!)

4.4 out of 5 * reviews at Amazon.

So break it down for me (again, thank you in advance). What "extras" does one need, or is it that there are no extras unless you WANT them?

I have 2 cells, one landline, Comcast cable internet/phone.

And if I go to Verizon Fios, does this change my availability to this device

TIA TIA

bmrbill wrote:I've always wondered what the quality of these were. I sure would love to save a ton of money on phone service.

What if the internet goes out? I guess there's always your cell phone...

You are correct. If you have poor internet service with lots of outages, you will have phone outages as well. I've got pretty good service and have only had accumulated outages on the order of a few minutes in the last year.

I bought this model here on Woot a year ago. It has worked flawlessly. It was very easy to set up and all of my phone jacks are live with this. It has saved me well over $500 in the year I've owned it.

The only thing I wish I wouldn't have bought was the Telo Handset. The handset is OK, just not worth the $40 Oomah asks for it.

i've been using http://www.nettalk.com/ for a while now. Service is mediocre. I bought the device, then paid something like 20 for the next year of service.
what's the benefit of this kind of a service? is it the quality of the device?

chipmonger wrote:Have an Ooma Hub already, and would like to upgrade to the Telo for remote DTMF support (to be able to access our home voice mail remotely) and improved fax support. Does anyone know if there are any costs moving from the Hub to Telo (other than the purchase cost)?

FYI - Just got off Ooma chat, they will update my account to the Telo for free.

kzjunk wrote:For those looking for an alternative to Vonage/Ooma/VoIP, look up Obi110. Less than $50, and never a fee with Google voice.

Sadly, this is simply not a true statement of fact. More accurately, there MAY never be a fee. The reality is that Google announces around November or so if they will start charging for service within the next calender year. For the last few years, yes, it has been free. However, this could change in 2013, or 2014, or whenever google gets around to it.

I have used the Obi100 with GV for a year or so now and it does work the trick...MOST of the time. There was a small outage a month or so back. So I'm certainly not saying NOT to use GV or the Obi. However, to say that there will never be a fee is simply not a statement that can be backed up.

mbrickell wrote:I have not had landline for probably 8 years now. Just cell phones. Was recently thinking about getting a landline or something like this as a backup to the cell.

My router is in a closet in my basement. He's not ready to come out yet, so it's not exactly convenient for a phone setup. How hard is it to set this up to where my phone jacks work throughout the house so the actual OOMA can be somewhere obscure?

Thanks.

Very simple. Actually our exact setup. We bought this quite some time ago for $139+$5 and have absolutely no regrets. We just put the Ooma in the closet with the modem and router, hooked it up to our MAIN phone line that services the whole house (our electric panel, and phone service are in the same closet), and EVERY jack in the house works fine. I guess the only thing you lose is that cool looking blue glowing answering machine! (We didn't mind, since we use the answering machine on our cordless base station...)

Lots of great and accurate answers here.  We love our ooma and this deal looks like a decent price.  We started with by using a phone number selected from their list to test it for several weeks - very clear sound quality over a 6 Mbit (4 measured) DSL connection.  The 'port' (move) of our 20 year old landline number is scheduled for today.

Highlight thoughts from our experience:

1.  With ooma you pay for your service up front via buying the box.  Your savings totally depend on how long that box lasts.  Divide the number of months of use into your purchase price.  We paid $150 at Costco a month ago, so this is a good price.  Standard warranty Is 1 yr vs half-yr on this deal.  Legally both ooma and MagicJack require you pay the 911/taxes, less than $4/mo for us in SE Michigan. With MJ they bury it their fee.

2.  I installed MJ for my parents so they could take their 30-yr old phone number from Michigan to  North Carolina - worked fine.  Big diff: the MJ hardware is crappy quality, cheap plastics... but a lot smaller - good for travel.  Ooma hardware is really nice quality and the voice mail controls are on the hardware - kinda like an answering machine, allows you to monitor incoming calls and send them to voicemail (monitor feature is 'premier' service). If you have the latest MJ, neither of these devices need your computer.

3.  Good luck with MJ support if you need it - ooma is very responsive to questions. (haven't had problems)

4.  Porting your existing phone number from a DSL/landline is the trickiest since your DSL is hooked to the same landline.  Talk/chat with your DSL provider and ooma - you tell your phone company you need a 'dry loop' (DSL without phone). Btw, $40 ooma number move vs $20 with MJ but the $40 goes away if you sign up for the premier package (see woot product description) - lots of handy, but not necessary features.

5. Vs leaving a cell phone in your house, you should be able to fax with this - I've successfully received so far but not fully tested outbound yet.

6.  If you want ooma to feed all your telephone jacks there are instructions showing you how to disconnect your 'plain old telephone service' (POTS) at the back of your house.  Tricky only if you have DSL or Internet only UVerse since both use your in house telephone wiring.  Otherwise all you do is plug your current cordless phone base directly into the ooma box and use your handsets as before.

7.  Based on my research for relatives in multiple locations this should be compatible with just about any decently fast Internet connection, cable, UVerse, DSL, etc...

We love dumping AT&T's ever increasing cost telephone service and it was way too easy - should have done it years ago!

jrsteen159 wrote:Can I add a new number now to ensure we like the device and port our old number later?

Sure can! It's even free (getting the new number, that is). We did that, until we were certain we liked it, and THEN ported our old number and cut the cord with Comcast. Or, if you don't care about keeping your old number, the new one is free. (Porting, at least when we did it, was free with the Premium ($9.95/month) subscription or a $40 one time fee without the premium subscription.)

ashah1111 wrote:This sounds great, but what if we have 6 cordless phones throughout the house? According to what I'm reading I can only connect one phone like to this.

You connect your base station to the device and broadcast to the remote phones as ususal

722lad wrote:Does anyone have experience taking this overseas so family and friends at home can call them as a "local" call? Does that work, or do you need 2 units (one in USA and one in, for example, England).

We travel to a vacation home in the Bahamas, and can take this (and our number) with us when we go. Free calls to home (or anywhere in the US) from the Bahamas, and calls to our 'normal' home number ring in the house in the Bahamas. Pretty cool, and SO MUCH cheaper than BaTelco!

premitive1 wrote:i've been using http://www.nettalk.com/ for a while now. Service is mediocre. I bought the device, then paid something like 20 for the next year of service.
what's the benefit of this kind of a service? is it the quality of the device?

They were rated #1 phone company in Consumer Reports Magazine for the past two years running..beating ATT, Vonage, MagicJunk, ...Nettalk not even on the list ('nuff said)

R&D wrote:Question to those who have ported their existing phone number (I currently have Vonage and can port the number)...

What is the porting charge and does Ooma have a monthly charge to port an existing number?

Porting is a ONE-TIME fee of $40. Or if you subscribe to the Premier ($9.95/month) service, it's free. So technically no monthly fee for a ported number.

woottoady wrote:1. Wired LAN required.
2. Monthly, directly billed to credit card.
3. May occasionally need to reboot unit (power off/on). Funky Ooma dialtone.
4. 7-digit dialing works fine. Will need to prefix long distant calls with a "1" (can be optionally disregarded with some dialing delay).
5. ???
6. It's usually automatic. Takes about 5 minutes after internet is restored. Status lights on unit let you know when there is a problem.

OK...so get this...Ooma just added a feature to "basic" that sends an email or text to you if anyone dials 911 from the device. another reason it is pretty elder-friendly

If we need two separate lines, do we have to buy two of these? Thinking of these for small business.

bennyk wrote:Do you have to pay the $59.99 activation fee? Can anyone who ordered this from woot in the past answer this?

There is no activation fee. If you bought one of these on Ebay you may have been scammed by someone reselling a previously activated device...they do charge a "reactivation fee" on used devices that get resold. This WOOT offer is factory refurbished which means it has been reset by Ooma ...so NO ACTIVATION FEE

A very recent review from ZDNet -- he's a happy camper!

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/diy-it/taking-google-voice-to-the-extreme-with-ooma/552

phyte wrote:There is no activation fee. If you bought one of these on Ebay you may have been scammed by someone reselling a previously activated device...they do charge a "reactivation fee" on used devices that get resold. This WOOT offer is factory refurbished which means it has been reset by Ooma ...so NO ACTIVATION FEE

Awesome, thanks. I am in.

craptacular wrote:
The only problem I have had with it since installing it was when my internet service got below 5 mbps <...> If you have nothing else using it I'm sure 5mbps will be fine, but if you have multiple users actively using your bandwidth it could be difficult to make calls and/or hear anyone while talking at lower bandwidths. (Like a cell phone cutting in and out.)

Many home routers have "QoS" (Quality of Service") setting where you can give priority to a traffic class (VOIP) or to a particular device (you'd plug in the Ooma's MAC address). This way, the Oooma's traffic is prioritized ahead of that of the other devices, and even if the other devices are making heavy use of the net, you can still talk on the phone without issues.

FWIW, I have one of these bought a about year ago from Woot. It has been working great, and call quality has gotten a lot better since I enabled the QoS stuff on my router (running dd-wrt).

dalejohnston wrote:I'm not sure this is a very good value. It's basically a VoIP service, like many others, with a couple of differences: Not only do you have to pay an expected subscription fee (which is higher than one particular VoIP provider who claims to have some kind of "magic"), most other VoIP providers have more features AND charge little or nothing for the necessary equipment. There is also a significant danger of this small company going out of business, rendering their service useless. DO YOUR RESEARCH BEFORE COMMITTING TO BUY!

Actually it's a pretty good deal. But, if the company goes belly-up, then I guess it could be a problem. At $99, it only takes 3-4 months over say Comcast to pay for itself. I agree, do your research and make sure it's right for you.

For us, our old triple play 'bundle' kept creeping up in price. When we dropped the phone portion, our Comcast bill went down by $45!! In three months, it paid for the unit. Those concerned with going to a VoIP, it is darn near identical to any cable phone service, less the $30-$50/month bill. Our Comcast phone service, although not marketed as VoIP, actually was a phone modem, and was voice phone over, well, the internet... Same thing to me!

Parting words, we love it, no regrets, and haven't noticed any differences. Ooma even has a very cool (musical) dialtone. Sure there may be cheaper alternatives, but we've been extrememly pleased with the Ooma Telo, and have saved a LOT of money since we switched.

scubalab wrote:Porting is a ONE-TIME fee of $40. Or if you subscribe to the Premier ($9.95/month) service, it's free. So technically no monthly fee for a ported number.

On ooma's site go to chat and ask them to give you the $99 for 1st year Premier deal - I didn't see it advertised on their site. (actually 14 months since you get a two month trial free). Saves you $20. I wasn't going to sign up for Premier until they told me about this deal - since I was already going to pay the onetime $40 number transfer fee. That means I'm now down to $5/month for Premier.

Note that ooma's number transfer process is more actively managed and transparent than Magic Jack's. And I've done them both.

pugelli 60 degree lh wedge is a dead link, pls help