I thought about the Woot last time it was up for sale. A few questions (again).

1 - Will it work behind my firewall - proxy VOIP today.
2 - I have multiple lines (analogue and VOIP) today just patched in to my telco patch panel. Will it work to say 2-3 phones, digital CID box and call manager patched in to patch panel?
3 - What are the yearly fees (taxes etc) to use the basics on this phone?

andythewxman wrote:Does anyone know if these will connect to a local 911 service?

Yes. By law, all VoIP systems must have this ability, but it's up to you to give 911 your address. This service helps you through the process.

petecaller wrote:I thought about the Woot last time it was up for sale. A few questions (again).

1 - Will it work behind my firewall - proxy VOIP today.
2 - I have multiple lines (analogue and VOIP) today just patched in to my telco patch panel. Will it work to say 2-3 phones, digital CID box and call manager patched in to patch panel?
3 - What are the yearly fees (taxes etc) to use the basics on this phone?

Are you showing off?

Bought one last time around. I will not be giving up my land line. The quality just isn't 100%. It's good, but you can still tell your on an internet call. I have 3MPS down, and 512 K up dsl that is very reliable. I installed it in front of my firewall/router and have contacted tech support numerous times, but unable to get the quality better.

Anyone know how this compares to Vonage in terms of voice quality?

I bought one last time off of woot as well.

Service is ok,

Forgot to cancle the prime service and was charged the monthly fee, in addtion to the taxes, which brought it close to what my land line costs before. Had to call them to downgrade to basic service.

Needed to move my cable modem and router to a spare bedroom to tie the ooma system back into my phone wiring. Since it is there, we don't use the ooma voice mail and just use our answering machine as we use to.

Phone quality is ok. Generally use our cell phones anyway, so in our situation, the house phone is more of a backup, or and addtional phone for babysitters, and family to call on occasion. Mostly telemarketer call and hang up.

The dial tone is a little annoying, but not that big of a deal.

Few issues getting setup, had to have ooma setup the dialing to get the 1 to auto dial for some reason, I thought I tried to setup on my end, but that didn't seem to work correctly for me. It could have been my error, I just don't remember.

The caller block on the prime service was a nice feature, but it seemed like I was always adding numbers to it. The telemarketer seem to have a lot of diffent numbers from the same caller, so not sure it would be worth the hassle of checking them each day. they never leave messages so you don't really know who the numbers were from. I tried some reverse lookups, but had mixed results on trying to figure out who they were.

All in all, ok swich for our circumstances.

Nettalk is better than this system and it is still fairly new so you don't have to pay taxes and fees. Big brother has already latched onto Ooma, so you have to pay taxes and surcharges the same way you do with Vonage. The Duo from Nettalk is also more portable, no computer needed, and is available now from Walmart online (90 day return policy) and is $69.95 initial cost (includes first year) for unlimited to U.S. and Canada and $29.95 each year after. I promise I have no affiliation with Nettalk, I just love it and it saves me a bunch of cash, so figured I would share.....

userzer0 wrote:Can you send/receive fax?

Yes

I have 4 Telos and 1 Ooma bought from Woot....I switched from Vonage. My experience is that Vonage was slightly better, with less delay on the phone conversation, and slightly better on consistent voice quality. I sometimes have to wait a second when talking to someone, for them to stop speaking before they will hear me start to talk. (duplex?) But because I save a ton of money with Ooma, I am willing to overlook some of the minor problems, and I believe Ooma will get better over time, assuming they stay in business!

jomion wrote:Not necessarily...With there "premiere service" ($10 a month) you can have the system auto-forward to a cell or land line when the electricity is out.

In the case that was suggested, cell towers were down, so no cell phones. And isn't the whole purpose of this product to replace landlines? So you're still SOL in the scenario that was presented...

Ooma Rocks! I'm an old school core user. The Telo is nice too. No monthly phone bills is AWESOME.

I picked up one of these on the last woot off.

I've had a few issues with the answering service. I set my cordless phone to answer after 4 rings and the ooma service to answer after 5 rings (just in case the internet service is disconnected). Well, it turns out the ooma starts ringing before the home phone does and was intercepting our messages. I increased the ooma service to answer after 9 rings.

Also, for no reason ooma service disconnects when I dial my home line from my cell. This happens about 50% of the time after just one ring. I need to do more investigation as this just started happening.

I need to replace my Ethernet cables with good quality and well shielded cables as that may be a cause of my problems.

Other than that the phone seems to work well and I don't miss the $40 monthly phone bill.

I must also add my Kudos for the Ooma. I've had mine (older version, not telo) for over a year and a half. It has paid for itself at least 4 times over already. Mine is set up secondary to my router. (IE you plug your cable modem into your Ooma and your router into your Ooma), and there's no network interference. I've never detected a degradation in my wireless or internet as a result of the Ooma.

It is wonderful. I'd recommend it over vonage.

Best of all, I ported my old land line number over to it, so I didn't need to change my phone number to use the ooma.

Chant with me, you'll feel better.

Oooooma
Ooooooma
Ooooooma.

Better?

Better.

renegadetim wrote:Hmm, don't know why nobody else has commented on this... but what the h.ell is with the write up on this one?

Very very strange to me, and a little brokeback-ish...

Woot explainer-bot says:

Steve Jobs' is a high ranking executive currently on leave of absence from Apple, a well known technology company.

Tim Cook will take Jobs place in his absence.

Steve Balmer is CEO of Microsoft corporation, another well known technology company.

Today's write-up is a light-hearted take on a bored Steve Jobs crank-calling his still-working business associates, his efforts foiled by the voice clarity of today's fine offering, the Ooma Telo VoIP Home Phone System.

bcaskey wrote:Purchased this last time. Fantastic system saving me lots of money over Vonage!

I also bought this the last time Woot offered it at this price. I ported my old Vonage phone number very easily and now have a better quality sound than Vonage at a very low under $4/mo (taxes) fee for unlimited usage.

I did pay the annual fee for Premium service to get free porting and also for the ability to blacklist individual numbers. Note that you need to prepay a fee if you plan to make internatioanl calls (fee per use).

userzer0 wrote:Can you send/receive fax?

I am using this and send faxes. You have to dial *99 first - which is something you have to look deep into manuals to figure out. It does a few pages pretty well. 50/50 on longer docs. I did 8 pages last night and went through first time. Sometimes I have noticed it has trouble if the fax is more than just a text document. So, if there are a bunch of images, a magazine article, etc. it has more trouble.

petecaller wrote:I thought about the Woot last time it was up for sale. A few questions (again).

1 - Will it work behind my firewall - proxy VOIP today.
2 - I have multiple lines (analogue and VOIP) today just patched in to my telco patch panel. Will it work to say 2-3 phones, digital CID box and call manager patched in to patch panel?
3 - What are the yearly fees (taxes etc) to use the basics on this phone?

1 - It will work behind your firewall if you don't block the ports it uses. According to Ooma, it uses these ports:
UDP 53, 123, 514, 1194, 3386, 3480, 10000-20000,
TCP 53, 443.

2 - The "Phone" port on this is just a single-line jack. You can wire from that however you want, and it will pass sufficient power to ring three phones and will send Caller ID info. Probably well more than that, but you asked about three and I know that is fine from my own experience.

3 - Yearly taxes and mandates fees depend on your location, and you can find them here. The current rate would be $41.64 ($3.47*12) for me.

This is a router running asterisk. You can just buy a router, and install asterisk for free without any monthly fee. Granted it takes some skill at following directions and you need to know what routers support Tomato firmware.

carygrant wrote:Anyone know if it assigns you a phone number with your local area code?

Like someone else said you pick your area code. In Michigan the only one available last time was a 313 (downtown Detroit) area code. I just paid the $40 and ported my number.

Tinypackages wrote:I had MJ and it was junk. 90% of the time you have problems. You can not FAX with it. I have had MJ for over 2 yrs finally gave up. Not to mention your PC has to be ON! I switched to Net Talk. And have never been so happy. Even fax with it all the time and does not use your computer.
http://nettalk.com/
$69.95 Includes DUO (net talk device) and first year of service. After the 1st yr its only $29.95 a year!
Service includes

* Free U.S. Phone Number
* Call Waiting, 3 Way Calling,
and Caller ID
* Voicemail to Email
* 411 Directory Assistance
* Enhanced 911 Service
* Priority Call Forwarding
* Customer Portal
* Technical Support with
our TALK Experts CALL them voice (unlike MJ support!)
* Fax Friendly/Compatible
And more for only $29.95 a year Thats $2.50 a month. Check it out.

You are wrong. You can fax with MJ. With my cell phone and majic jack and google phone I don't need anything else.

RobertBruce wrote:Don't forget: In emergencies these won't work when the power is out. We've had several massive fires in town. Power was out, cell phone towers destroyed. Old fashion corded phone? worked just fine because they get power from their copper line....

That is great advise, every household should have 1 old school phone around for emergencies ....

What's the difference between this and MagicJack?

Does anyone know of this works with an alarm system?

Is it possible to record phone calls on this system? I want to record phone calls and hear them back easily on my computer? Has anyone done that with Ooma? How hard/easy it is do that?

sulululoo wrote:anyone with experience installing the Ooma Telo on a network with a Synology NAS and-or Netgear WNDR3700 wireless router -- any issues? thanks.

I use my ooma Telo with a Netgear WNDR3700. Of course, I have the Telo connected directly to my cable modem, and the Netgear connects to the Telo, as ooma recommends. The only issue I had was that my 900mhz portable phones didn't really peacefully coexist with the wireless router, so I switched them out for a Vtech DECT phone system and everything runs much much better. I highly recommend ooma - great phone quality, tremendous tech support, very very reliable. But your upload internet speed is really important!

Is this hackable? I want to blow out the OOma service and install linux + asterisk to use as a real PBX with my own VoIP service (Broadvoice, no problems in 8 years and they let me have full control of my stuff)

Looking for a cheap hardware platform to run a asterisk server on.

I've had mu Ooma for 5 months now and it is amazing. I will never go back to a traditional phone again.

schiegg wrote:Bought one last time around. I will not be giving up my land line. The quality just isn't 100%. It's good, but you can still tell your on an internet call. I have 3MPS down, and 512 K up dsl that is very reliable. I installed it in front of my firewall/router and have contacted tech support numerous times, but unable to get the quality better.

Do you have a data only line? Our DSL is through Century Link so the home phone is apparently on the same line. I bought one last time and tried to hook it up. I was told by Century Link that it would only work if I have a "data only" line and they would charge me $15 more per month to change. Kind of defeats the purpose of buying the unit. It is still here in a box and I need to figure out what to do with it! Thanks!

smigit2002 wrote:around $200 on amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Ooma-Telo-Free-Phone-Service/dp/B002O3W4LE

Check Cosco: $199 + 3 month prem.service, +$50 international calls for free. And the the unit is new. Sorry Woot! hate to do it to you.

Beware of any internet-based phone system, they are only as reliable as your internet service and your power (If either go down, you're out of luck).

bought OOMA Hub from woot couple months ago and love it!!

Ok, I've read through a lot of the comments but not all of them. I'm considering this thing because I have piss-poor cell signal in my basement apartment. The AT&T option is the 3G Microcell which doesn't look that great.

So I guess what I want to know is, if I'm using my iPhone with the bluetooth adapter, my calls are coming from Ooma, right? So would I be able to text message through AT&T? That's the biggest pain in the ass, not being able to send/receive texts in my house. Actually ok not being able to send/receive calls is worse, but I talk less frequently than text...

Anyone have advice? Curious about iPhone compatibility, anyone have personal experience? God I hate AT&T.

-edit- I should also say I have Google Voice and if purchased, I plan on using the Ooma Premier service

vscott1 wrote:What's the difference between this and MagicJack?

You do not need to leave your computer running all the time to make and receive calls. Its a stand alone unit.

I've had one for a year now, and dropped the landline maybe 10 months ago. I like it.

Is it as good as a landline? No.

Is it close enough that I don't miss the landline? Yes.

Voice quality is good (and seems to be getting better, though I may just be getting used to it), I haven't really had a problem with "half duplex" stuff, and the monthly cost can't be beat (I pay about $1/month). Reliability for me has been good, but it does require internet, so if you have problems with internet downtime or you have to reset your router twice a week to get an internet connection, you might want to get that fixed before you get an Ooma.

I also love that I can use the telo to energize all of the phone jacks in my house, so if I want to install a new phone, all I have to do is plug it into an existing phone jack, and when I pick up the phone I get the Ooma dial tone.

PE in the house!

Now I dialed 911 a long time ago
Don't you see how late they're reactin'
They only come when they wanna
So get up get, get get down
911 is a joke in yo town
I call a cab 'cause a cab will come quicker
Cause 911 is a fake life saver

Hey I use this and could not be happier. Works great with Google voice. I have used magic jack and other voip service and this has been the best and easiest

BEWARE COMCAST INTERNET USERS!!!!

Ok so here is the deal. If you have comcast you should know about their powerboost ( you know your download goes really fast and then gets throttled after about 30 seconds) Well this screws with the VOIP service from ooma. I had dropped calls and weird problems about 50% of the time. ***Here is how to fix this issue: log into the telo (not the website, you need to type the address of the telo unit itself) and change the connection speed from automatic to whatever your true speed is (1.5m / 3m / 6m) I have mine set at 3MB even though I have a 6 meg connection and it has worked flawlessly for the past 6 month.....about 2 month on Comcast and I have since switched to ATT. Overall I LOVE this box. My brother has made the switch just a month ago and has been happy with it also.

Highly recommend! I bought an ooma and dropped my landline nearly two years ago. Kept (ported) my home phone number and have been saving $45 per month ever since.

It's great not needing to have my computer on to use the phone, and not having a monthly fee. The service has been very good, and we use our cell phones most of the time anyway.

phacopida wrote:My power goes out at least a dozen times every year and my land-line corded phone ALWAYS works in this situation. It is the only reason we keep the relic. When the power is out for several days and our cell phones cannot be recharged, we are mighty glad we have the old dinosaur.

You can have the Ooma transfer calls to another # (cell) in power outages. I had an issue once and it worked great. I love my Ooma.

Don't see this posted already, so here's the Ooma monthly tax and fee calculator: http://www3.ooma.com/tax_calculator.php.

My Iowa number would be $3.47 / month; for comparison, the taxes and fees and fees I pay to Vonage on top of the advertised rate are $6.46.

I'll give it a shot. Monthly savings against Vonage Basic will have me even in 9 months.