I'm a very satisfied Ooma user of about 2 years. I only use my cell phone and Ooma now. I paid the $300 retail for the original Ooma device and it was a great deal. For $140, it's a steal.

The quality has been perfect for me (I'm in Chicago) and it was definitely worth the switch.

I've saved at least $540 with Ooma so far. $35 x 24 months = $840. Ooma cost me $300. That's a $540 savings.

THANK YOU OOMA!

Will

cgstuff wrote: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!

I do not have data only, I have ATT phone and DSL (on the same line). Maybe a call to ATT is in line. However all the tests came back perfect (jitter, packet loss, etc).

wclements wrote:I'm a very satisfied Ooma user of about 2 years. I only use my cell phone and Ooma now. I paid the $300 retail for the original Ooma device and it was a great deal. For $140, it's a steal.

The quality has been perfect for me (I'm in Chicago) and it was definitely worth the switch.

I've saved at least $540 with Ooma so far. $35 x 24 months = $840. Ooma cost me $300. That's a $540 savings.

THANK YOU OOMA!

Will

well you left off the $3.47 X 24= $83.28 you paid in fee's .. so thats $41.64 a year you pay in fees .. Nettalk is cheaper .. MagicJack is out for me because it requires the use of a PC on all the time. if not MJ would be the hands down winner in the price war..

userzer0 wrote:Can you send/receive fax?

yes

Bought my Ooma Telo over a year ago. Haven't had a single issue with it. I also love that it's free service, at least for now. Hopefully Pelosi won't find out about it and slap a big tax on it.

So the Ooma must be physically connected to my router, yes? It is not a wireless device?

Saye2009 wrote:So the Ooma must be physically connected to my router, yes? It is not a wireless device?

Replying to myself here with another question. Help an old man out here, please?

I have a contract with AT&T that provides my internet and land line. I think I would love to drop my land line, which is pricey, but I do not pay "per call." I am legend in that I am the last person on earth without a cell phone.

Jatravartid question 1: When the Ooma rings, what physical object do I use to answer the call if I get rid of my land line?

yardman198 wrote:well let me tell you .. I looked into this battle a while now. I have Vonage right now and loved it for 4-5 years BUT the time to switch is now. If I can get NetTalk for the expired 50% off deal. I would pull the trigger. If I can get this Ooma for under $60 I would pull the trigger.. So all that said at current prices I like the NetTalk setup but for full price its still a no go. I have more time than money.

You are the kind of person who would drive a Yugo since the initial price is cheap even though it will cost you more down the road and isn't powerful enough to reach freeway speeds.

The key to any frugal purchase is finding that sweet spot between price and performance. Just going as cheap as you can for the sake of paying the least initial cost is not very smart.

yardman198 wrote:well you left off the $3.47 X 24= $83.28 you paid in fee's .. so thats $41.64 a year you pay in fees .. Nettalk is cheaper .. MagicJack is out for me because it requires the use of a PC on all the time. if not MJ would be the hands down winner in the price war..

He doesn't pay the fees since the fees are a new thing mandated by the FCC and he got grandfathered in.

These NetTalk trolls are really getting annoying.

Ringo4422 wrote:Can anyone who already has this tell me if the incoming ring pattern is a "Normal" ring pattern? I had T-Mobile @Home VOIP and not only was the sound quality poor, but the incoming ring pattern was twice as fast as a normal one. Instead of ring..... ring..... ring..... it was ring.. ring.. ring.. etc

We have this and you can select the ring pattern on their website. Their customer service is not that bad, but most of the correspondence is over email.

zminus2 wrote:
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

I purchased the bluetooth adapter and use it with my blackberry tour. Once I enter my house, the blackberry automatically pairs with the Ooma and if I receive a phone call on either line (cell or Ooma), I can use the cell or any of the handsets to answer the call. If I enter my house while on a cell phone call, I can transfer the call to the Ooma which causes the handsets to ring with the transferred call. This has been awesome for me because I have a few dead cell zones in my house and now I just drop the BB in a charger when I get home and use the handsets. It does not affect my ability to text with the BB. I can't speak to the Ooma mobile since it appears to currently only work with the iphone, and I haven't used the google phone integration although I have seen options on the dashboard to set it up.

Bottom line: this has been one of the best purchases I've made recently.

Ringo4422 wrote:Can anyone who already has this tell me if the incoming ring pattern is a "Normal" ring pattern? I had T-Mobile @Home VOIP and not only was the sound quality poor, but the incoming ring pattern was twice as fast as a normal one. Instead of ring..... ring..... ring..... it was ring.. ring.. ring.. etc

Seems about normal to me. The dial tone is weird, but I've heard you can change that back to normal if you want. I kinda like it.

I have been using OOMA for the past 2 months. I am very impressed. Much better than the Verizon landline. Ordered a Telos today for my inlaws vacation house.

Saye2009 wrote:Replying to myself here with another question. Help an old man out here, please?

Jatravartid question 1: When the Ooma rings, what physical object do I use to answer the call if I get rid of my land line?

You'll plug the Ooma box up between your modem and you're router. You can plug it up to your router if you prefer, but it's easier and better-performing the first way.

You'll plug a phone or (better yet) wireless handset base into the Ooma box. You can also plug the Ooma box into one of your phone jacks to ring the phones throughout the house, but the output voltage isn't strong enough to ring more than a couple of phones. Best scenario - purchase a 2-, 3-, or more cordless phone set if you don't already have one and use that.

Ringo4422 wrote:Can anyone who already has this tell me if the incoming ring pattern is a "Normal" ring pattern? I had T-Mobile @Home VOIP and not only was the sound quality poor, but the incoming ring pattern was twice as fast as a normal one. Instead of ring..... ring..... ring..... it was ring.. ring.. ring.. etc

Hi,
Yes it does have a normal ring tone. Additionally, you can also set up identifying rings so you know who's calling before you get up to answer. We have it set to give 3 short rings, then I know it's my MIL, and maybe I'll get up and answer!

Additionally, you get extra phone numbers with it that can be set to any area code. Again with the MIL, we set one of the numbers up for her, so we are now a local call for her. (We are 800+ miles away)

We got our Ooma a few months ago and love it. The sound quality is just as good as Bellsouth - by that I mean you wouldn't know you weren't with the 'regular' phone company.

You can't go wrong, especially at this price. Though, we paid double, but bought it at Costco for $199, just in case we didn't like it. No problems porting our number over. For us anyway, a seamless transition away from the baby bell!

can anyone tell me if calls to Puerto Rico are also free? thanx...

gpalermo wrote:First, once your number is transferred to the VOIP service and I do not care which one, it is no longer portable.

Like speedshark I moved from another VOIP company (Vonage) to Ooma and had no problem porting the number.

yardman198 wrote:you must be kidding me .. you spent 9 hours on a board talking about VOIP and you still know very little about it. Low cost is what everyone wants. and "problems down the road" is not a option. I had VOIP before most people even knew what it was. and if YOU have problems with your setup its your lack of knowledge that is holding you back and not a hardware issue. Its all about bandwidth !! Like I said I had Vonage before it was "hip" and NEVER had a issue with it.. So Troll on that.

I have VOIP. I don't have any problems with it. I haven't had a "land line" since 2002. I want to save money but I also don't want to get something cheap simply because it's the cheapest. Others have different priorities. On a board discussing a deal that netted you a free copy of tax software if you paid $.01 for computer tuneup software, there were people actually trying to find ways to avoid paying the penny. I kid you not.

Look for the sweet spot that balances performance and price. Ooma seems to have that sweet spot at the moment.

I was a SunRocket VOIP user until they went bankrupt and their hardware box became useless, so I thought long and hard about going with ooma last woot. I jumped in and haven't looked back.

Dropping the telephone part of my FIOS triple play service reduced my monthly bill by close to $30 when you include all the taxes, fees, surcharges, etc. Ooma costs me $10 + sales tax /month for premium service with 2 lines. One is 'dedicated' for home use and has its own distinctive ringtone so everyone knows which line it is. If you want, you can dedicate a phone to one line only so, for example, a teen or in-home business could have a line that nobody else 'accidentally' picks up.

Another great feature is being able to simultaneously ring my ooma phone handset and my cell phone. I give out my ooma number to everyone and have ooma forward it to my cell. If I'm home, I pick up the ooma phone. If I'm out, I can either use my mobile phone or let it go to voicemail. VERY convenient! You can have it forward after "X" number of rings, too.

When their Android app comes out next week (or thereabouts), I'll get that too. With premium service you get 250 free minutes/month and since I'm on a cheapo Virgin Mobile $25/mo plan, the extra minutes (using wifi), will be very welcome.

All in all this is a great price, a great product, and an excellent value. If you're still sitting on the fence... go for it. Worst case: Sell it on Craigslist if you're not happy.

well based on current day data most users will pay $41.64 a year in Ooma taxes/fees. with all the options out there NOW it just seems a bit much to charge $139-$199+ for a "box" that most services will give for $60 or less. I do have a cell and I dont really NEED a home phone. I just like having it there for when I do use it.

I'm into Roku now. Internet TV is what everyone should be looking at now and Ditch your dish/cable TV !! (*note Ruku has a google voice "private channel" now!) its in basic form but its there..

Has anybody used a 56K modem through their Ooma? I regularly use one for work and that is the only reason I keep a landline.

I guess I should consider myself lucky as my VOIP system is now a combination of Google Voice and a bundle of free incoming SIP services like Gizmo5, IPKall, IPComms, and Sipgate. Using a sip aggregate (sipsorcery) and a sophisticated scripted dialplan, I have access to free incoming and outgoing calls tied in to (2) Google voice numbers. This is also good on my Ipod touch mobile device w/wifi.

Free, free, free, as long as Google Voice is around! No $$/month, no computer on as my home phone uses that same Sunrocket box connected to router, no taxes and no fees. I still use the mj as a backup and this system rarely goes down!

Synchron.

raylang wrote:Has anybody used a 56K modem through their Ooma? I regularly use one for work and that is the only reason I keep a landline.

..OHH I see what you mean .. that same question came up on the Ooma board and it seemed to work out that NO it will not work.. here was a speed test on a 56k modem on a Ooma line.. packets out of order was at 100% !! and the speed came out to about 17kb

*cut/paste*
VoIP test statistics
--------------------
Jitter: you --> server: -- ms
Jitter: server --> you: -- ms
Packet loss: you --> server: -- %
Packet loss: server --> you: 0.0 %
Packet discards: 0.0 %
Packets out of order: 100.0 %
Estimated MOS score: --

Speed test statistics
---------------------
Download speed: 13216 bps
Upload speed: 13704 bps
Download quality of service: 68 %
Upload quality of service: -- %
Download test type: HTTP
Upload test type: HTTP
Maximum TCP delay: 1360 ms
Average download pause: 880 ms
Minimum round trip time to server: 477 ms
Average round trip time to server: 495 ms
Estimated download bandwidth: 18400bps
Route concurrency: 1.3922518
Download TCP forced idle: 0 %
Maximum route speed: 1099112bps

Dumped my ancient and extremely expensive landline for the Telo 3 months ago and haven't looked back. Hooked up my 6 yr old cordless phone system to it, and the family knows no difference other than how much better our phone sounds.
Key to the whole shebang is quality of your broadband connection. I set up QOS settings on my router from day 1 and have had zero issues with drops.
As for the folks reminding us that power outages kill the Ooma, well... they kill all the other VOIP solutions too, including the triple play packages that cost 10x what I pay monthly for Ooma. Having the Telo, router and modem on a UPS works well, as long as the power outage doesn't take out your ISP's routers as they tend to do in my neighborhood!

Got one last time 'round. Same price, super quick setup. Big fan. Big fan. It's a great way to drop the floor on a cell phone plan and chat for free at home. You know. . . like we used to. No noticeable difference between the Ooma and a landline, except THE BILL! Ooma Premier is pretty wicked too, but I am a cheap son of a so-and-so. My "fees and taxes" bill is about $3.00/month. Uncle Sam is inescapable on this one. . .

I have the older model and it was the best investment I ever made...

synchron40 wrote:I guess I should consider myself lucky as my VOIP system is now a combination of Google Voice and a bundle of free incoming SIP services like Gizmo5, IPKall, IPComms, and Sipgate. Using a sip aggregate (sipsorcery) and a sophisticated scripted dialplan, I have access to free incoming and outgoing calls tied in to (2) Google voice numbers. This is also good on my Ipod touch mobile device w/wifi.

Free, free, free, as long as Google Voice is around! No $$/month, no computer on as my home phone uses that same Sunrocket box connected to router, no taxes and no fees. I still use the mj as a backup and this system rarely goes down!

Synchron.

Synchron - Any way I can contact you about using an old Sunrocket box and your setup? I have one of those that I'd given up for dead-useless. I wouldn't mind tinkering with it and setting up an additional phone line. (I love my ooma telo and not looking to give it up, but also really big on open source and re-purposing equipment). Maybe provide a link to a blog or site that describes what you've done and how you set it up???

Thanks

Ringo4422 wrote:Can anyone who already has this tell me if the incoming ring pattern is a "Normal" ring pattern? I had T-Mobile @Home VOIP and not only was the sound quality poor, but the incoming ring pattern was twice as fast as a normal one. Instead of ring..... ring..... ring..... it was ring.. ring.. ring.. etc

I have a telo and am a ooma fan. You can change the ring pattern through the telo's setup screen. If I remember correctly there are quite a few options.

phacopida wrote:Yeah. I live in the epicenter of a two-block area that is prone to power outages. Usually it is only for an hour or two but sometimes it's for days. Anytime you hear on the news that there are still 150 people without power in Kitsap County, you can bet I am one of them. Our power goes out when someone sneezes.

I feel for you... A UPS will keep you a float... But your ISP might not be up to snuff... Ultimately I would complain to my PUC everytime this happens. I am in this country for over 15 years and I don't understand why power is treated like this is third world... In Germany where I spent the first 27 years of my live we had one 12 hour outage in those 27 years... I am pretty lucky for the US that I average 2-3 outages a year - but that's still completely unacceptable - and I complain every time asking for a formal explanation...

Status quo, you know, is Latin for 'the mess we're in'.
Ronald Reagan

I went from AT&T to Vonage about 7 years ago. It was simple in that once the landline number was ported over to Vonage, I disconnected the landline wires leading into the house and plugged the Vonage box into the wall telephone jack. Worked great!

I bought the white Ooma box late last year and hooked it up over Christmas break. It took about 2 weeks to port the number to Ooma, but I was able to daisy chain the Vonage and Ooma boxes so it was seamless.

I've found that Ooma's transcription of voicemails is much more accurate and useful than Vonage. AT&T still doesn't have it.

Charter Cable wanted to have me wait around a day for them to plug their box in. Never got my business.

AT&T doesn't offer anything nearly as useful, even though I'm a U-Verse customer for about 2 years. We have noticed that callers have trouble hearing us frequently, so the messages about how to make U-Verse work are greatly appreciated. Can't wait to try it.

I bought one of these and the unit smelled really, really bad. We eventually had to get rid of it because it had a poop smell that was travelling through the entire house.

Ringo4422 wrote:Can anyone who already has this tell me if the incoming ring pattern is a "Normal" ring pattern? I had T-Mobile @Home VOIP and not only was the sound quality poor, but the incoming ring pattern was twice as fast as a normal one. Instead of ring..... ring..... ring..... it was ring.. ring.. ring.. etc

It has a normal ring unless you set it otherwise.

lddaly wrote:Alarm companies do not support VoIP phone lines. They will install a cellular unit for communication with their service. I was charged a one-time fee of $89 for such a device.

Simple - don't tell them it's VoIP. Set it to use a dialing prefix and set it to dial *99 before the number. Or set "fax mode" for that line.

blohner wrote:I feel for you... A UPS will keep you a float... But your ISP might not be up to snuff... Ultimately I would complain to my PUC everytime this happens. I am in this country for over 15 years and I don't understand why power is treated like this is third world... In Germany where I spent the first 27 years of my live we had one 12 hour outage in those 27 years... I am pretty lucky for the US that I average 2-3 outages a year - but that's still completely unacceptable - and I complain every time asking for a formal explanation...

Status quo, you know, is Latin for 'the mess we're in'.
Ronald Reagan

I lived in Germany for only a year but experienced a windstorm of near cyclonic proportions while I was there. And you are correct - we never lost power.
By the way, your English is great. My Deutsch is embarrassingly awful, but I am still working on it. Oh, and I am now hooked on Tatort! I watch it every week online.

yardman198 wrote:well based on current day data most users will pay $41.64 a year in Ooma taxes/fees. with all the options out there NOW it just seems a bit much to charge $139-$199+ for a "box" that most services will give for $60 or less. I do have a cell and I dont really NEED a home phone. I just like having it there for when I do use it.

I'm into Roku now. Internet TV is what everyone should be looking at now and Ditch your dish/cable TV !! (*note Ruku has a google voice "private channel" now!) its in basic form but its there..

Well, if you don't want it, it's no skin off our teeth if you don't want to take advantage of a great deal. You can lead a horse to water...

I have had Ooma for over 2 years. I love it and figure with my phone usage we have saved over $1200 with the long distance savings etc. Ported my number over, and plugged everything into my router and home phone system. I recommend a wireless system like Vtech. It makes having a phone where ever you need it simple.
Only area of difficulty, connection for DirecTV TIVO. But we went on to the forums and found a couple of codes to use before the dial up number, and it's all worked out now.
I will absolutely keep this system for a long, long time. When it dies, I'll get another. Hopefully Woot will have another deal then!

I started my Ooma service last in Nov10. Love it so far. Recommend premier service for the extra bennies. If you have two lines you have to buy the telo and have a telo handset to separate the two numbers.

To those of you mentioning asterisk, what services do you actually use to make it totally free?

The actual asterisk seems to just be software, which can be installed on certain routers or even on a linux PC (and then I assume you could put a modem into it and use that phone plug like a magic jack). But that just replaces the hardware, not the service.

teedo757 wrote: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.

Thanks for the tip. I've had some occational dropped calls on my Ooma at work w/ Comcast, but never at home on AT&T DSL, which is way slower. I will definitely have to give this a try!

No Skype love in 360+ posts?

Yes, the 'puter has to be on for Skype, but you can't beat free video calls!