cjpowers wrote:I always wonder about the 911 thing - you are going to pay $20-$40 for a traditional land line on the off chance that something will happen to you and you will be able to dial 911, but not be able to talk?

It happens more often than you might think. I live in a county with probably 120,000 people and here probably 10 of these every weekend.that being said these calls all fall into a few categories.

1. Domestic violence or child abuse, they make it to the phone but all the dispatcher hears is a scream and a click.

2. Parties involving underage drinking, subjects with warrants, drugs, etc. all the dispatcher usually heres is "get here now" when a fight breaks out, when the police show up everyone is scattering, and no one will talk.

3. humans who have an actual emergency, but don't know their address or where they are, don't have the common sense to stay on the line, or give the dispatcher any info, or who call it in and just leave. This results inthe police trying to find them before they know if they need fire or medics.

4.kids playing on the phone

5. Kids on the phone who don't know their address, just know to call 911. Usually domestic violence, or have parents/older siblings at risk for medical issues, strokes, seizures, diabetes, etc,

I have never heard one for a home invasion, and if power is knocked out and cell phones are down you can bet local police are swamped and your helps not going to get there in time anyway. The 911 service this has pops up your address, its e911 just like every other cell phone and voip provider has. If I, had kids I'd be fine with voip, and have an old cell phone plugged in in a drawer with the address written down next to out for them to use as a back up

[quote postid="4401727"

Of course, if you get DSL from your phone company you are not going to be able to disconnect. In that case, it seems that you need a phone set with several satellite hand sets to be able to use this Ooma. If not, it seems that you can only connect one phone unless you want to run a long line to some other room. Correct?[/quote]

In fact you don't. One main line should come in and go to a splitter in side your house. You disconnect it from the splitter, put a connector on if necessary, plug it into the dsl modem. Your house phone writing is now a closed system, not connected to the phone company. Plug the ooma into the modem, its line jack into the splitter, or another jack, and your good to go. You do have to find the splittwe though, or just follow the main line into the house, cut it, and crimp on ends

unksol wrote:It happens more often than you might think. I live in a county with probably 120,000 people and here probably 10 of these every weekend.that being said these calls all fall into a few categories.

1. Domestic violence or child abuse, they make it to the phone but all the dispatcher hears is a scream and a click.

2. Parties involving underage drinking, subjects with warrants, drugs, etc. all the dispatcher usually heres is "get here now" when a fight breaks out, when the police show up everyone is scattering, and no one will talk.

3. humans who have an actual emergency, but don't know their address or where they are, don't have the common sense to stay on the line, or give the dispatcher any info, or who call it in and just leave. This results inthe police trying to find them before they know if they need fire or medics.

4.kids playing on the phone

5. Kids on the phone who don't know their address, just know to call 911. Usually domestic violence, or have parents/older siblings at risk for medical issues, strokes, seizures, diabetes, etc,

I have never heard one for a home invasion, and if power is knocked out and cell phones are down you can bet local police are swamped and your helps not going to get there in time anyway. The 911 service this has pops up your address, its e911 just like every other cell phone and voip provider has. If I, had kids I'd be fine with voip, and have an old cell phone plugged in in a drawer with the address written down next to out for them to use as a back up

If you go the cellphone+address paper route, i recommend getting all spectrum of phones and make sure they are all on a charger.

- iDen (if your area supports it) (Srint/nextel)

- CDMA (Verizon / US Cellular)

- PCS (Sprint/Virgin/MetroPCS)

- GSM (AT+T / Tmobile) or better known as (Cingular/VoiceStream)


A good backup power supply for important Battlefield Earth (2000) in the house, flash lights and some stuffed go bags help too.

stans39 wrote:

Of course, if you get DSL from your phone company you are not going to be able to disconnect. In that case, it seems that you need a phone set with several satellite hand sets to be able to use this Ooma. If not, it seems that you can only connect one phone unless you want to run a long line to some other room. Correct?

In fact you don't. One main line should come in and go to a splitter in side your house. You disconnect it from the splitter, put a connector on if necessary, plug it into the dsl modem. Your house phone wiring is now a closed system, not connected to the phone company. Plug the ooma into the modem, its line jack into the splitter, or another jack, and your good to go. You do have to find the splittwe though, or just follow the main line into the house, cut it, and crimp on ends

Homercles wrote:What does this thing do that Magic Jack doesn't? I use Magic Jack for 20 bucks a year and get all the benefits of this device in smaller, more portable package.

Maybe there's something I'm missing but 140 bucks seems like a waste.

Your computer doesn't have to be on to use it. The voice quality is tons better, and you can port your current phone number for a one time fee of $39. Beats Magic Jack hands down.

tridentia wrote:If you go the cellphone+address paper route, i recommend getting all spectrum of phones and make sure they are all on a charger.

- iDen (if your area supports it) (Srint/nextel)

- CDMA (Verizon / US Cellular)

- PCS (Sprint/Virgin/MetroPCS)

- GSM (AT+T / Tmobile) or better known as (Cingular/VoiceStream)


A good backup power supply for important Battlefield Earth (2000) in the house, flash lights and some stuffed go bags help too.

I'd also recommend something like...


http://www.gpscity.com/spot-connect-beacon.html

I feel a song coming on....

Ooma Telo VoIP
Is this another Riddle For Me?

Ooma Telo VoIP
Oh what a happy Oompa Loompa I'd be!

tridentia wrote:If you go the cellphone+address paper route, i recommend getting all spectrum of phones and make sure they are all on a charger.

- iDen (if your area supports it) (Srint/nextel)

- CDMA (Verizon / US Cellular)

- PCS (Sprint/Virgin/MetroPCS)

- GSM (AT+T / Tmobile) or better known as (Cingular/VoiceStream)


A good backup power supply for important Battlefield Earth (2000) in the house, flash lights and some stuffed go bags help too.

Lol thats a little excessive but what ever floats your boat. If my ups, internet, power grid, and cell network are down you can bet ill get to my kids a hell of alot faster than 911

[quote postid="4401738" user="unksol"]In fact you don't. One main line should come in and go to a splitter in side your house. You disconnect it from the splitter, put a connector on if necessary, plug it into the dsl modem. Your house phone wiring is now a closed system, not connected to the phone company. Plug the ooma into the modem, its line jack into the splitter, or another jack, and your good to go. You do have to find the splittwe though, or just follow the main line into the house, cut it, and crimp on ends[/quote

That is interesting, thanks. However, I have never seen a splitter. I will go out tomorrow and see where the line comes into my house and try to find it. My modem is downstairs and if the splitter is upstairs, I will still have to run a line to downstairs, Correct?

Bought this from Costco 6 months ago. Has never worked well. There is a severe echo/delay and breaking up on about half the calls. We have Verizon Fios internet at 30mbs up/down, so speed is not an issue. Fax would not work for us either. Tried everything possible on the Ooma forums. Tech support was non-existent. Had to cancel finally. $189 plus premier plan costs down the drain.

wkutzler wrote:If you dont have any power for two weeks, who gives a Battlefield Earth (2000) about having a landline? Your town was blasted to sticks. What good is just a phone. Nothing. You're still living in the Land of Oz, get back to reality where landlines have near 0 purpose. Just like a T1, good for phone trunks, thats about it.

The town was indeed blasted to sticks but in the mean time, my neighbor was able to call 911 without power with her analog line. I had phone and after I got a generator, I had internet.

Woops...was reading the comments, sold out before I made a decision.

SkippyFlipjack wrote:I'm considering switching from Vonage just for the cost savings. One thing Vonage added recently is transcriptions to their email notifications of voicemails. Does Ooma have email notifications, or transcriptions of messages?

I have Vonage & I still bought this device, The new feature from Vonage "Visual VM via Email" is not good at all, they almost never come thru with the actual message the person left. The only reason I read the VM emails is because it is sometimes comical to try and figure out what the real message was. Don't mind saving the $35/month if only this company can stay in business long enough for the savings to pay off this thing.

wkutzler wrote:Yes. RTFM.

RTFM. That is great.

Crapola. I bought a new OOMA Saturday at Costco for $179. Figures I could have saved $40 by waiting one DAY. Still, when I was at BEST BUY, that great money sucking Big Box PIG, their price for OOMA was $249. So I felt pretty good about my Costco deal of $179. My Ooma phone was not too hard to set up, but I want to keep my same phone number, so it will take 2-4 weeks to "port" my old number to the OOMA system. So I have to pay that money sucking dog COMCAST for another month. :o( . Still, do whatever you need to do to save on your monthly bills. Reduce your costs and save your GREEN.

Batman4oz wrote:I feel a song coming on....

Ooma Telo VoIP
Is this another Riddle For Me?

Ooma Telo VoIP
Oh what a happy Oompa Loompa I'd be!

Judy died in the land of OZ.

stans39 wrote:

That is interesting, thanks. However, I have never seen a splitter. I will go out tomorrow and see where the line comes into my house and try to find it. My modem is downstairs and if the splitter is upstairs, I will still have to run a line to downstairs, Correct?

The splitter is probably down stairs. It could be in a metal box where the exposed wires are connected via rows of metal contacts with slots you push the wire into. This is common in businesses and newer homes because it lets you reconfigure the connections. At its simplest it could just be a plug that goes to a jack for the main with several plug jacks, or the wires coyld just be twisted together with twist caps (very bad way to do it). in a basic one line phone system all phone writes are connected. Check utility areas, closets, my parents was done behind a phone jack plate in the wall, between basement rafters near the outside box, etc. if you can't find it you could always run a new line to the box from the modem.

you may need to run new lines. . You could disconnect the main line, AND the jack your modem is currently using from the split point, then connect those two together if you don't need a phone jack thete, then connect the ooma to your network and plug it into another phone jack. There are more options if your house is wired with cat 5 since cart 5 has 8 wires nd phone phone line only needs 4, meaning you could run 2 phone connections on one cable. My friends house is like this, but the wire colors won't match the main line so you have to pay more attention

Check out homephonewiring.com, little techmical, but good info, if you arent already running cat 5 for your modem you probably should.

kadamik wrote:Bought this from Costco 6 months ago. Has never worked well. There is a severe echo/delay and breaking up on about half the calls. We have Verizon Fios internet at 30mbs up/down, so speed is not an issue. Fax would not work for us either. Tried everything possible on the Ooma forums. Tech support was non-existent. Had to cancel finally. $189 plus premier plan costs down the drain.

Somehow I doubt the problem was with the device itself, but rather your failure to configure QoS on your router.

TCayer wrote:How do you look them up? Is there something special included with the premium package, or do you just use the internet? My experience with researching numbers usually turns up nothing, as they are unpublished wireless phones, rollover phones, etc.

I just google the 10 digit number, without dashes or spaces. Usually I get results that include sites like 800Notes.com and whocallsme.com, where people post about these numbers. First thing I do if I get a call from an unfamiliar call id is send it to voicemail. If it's legit, they'll leave a voicemail. If it's not, I look it up and 9 times out of 10 it's a reported telemarketer/scam type call, and I black list it, so it never rings again. YMMV, but it works for me! It cuts down the annoyance calls to practically zilch for me.

MichaelrGraham wrote:That's just what I was hoping to hear. Thank you for the clear and concise answer!

You're welcome!

MichaelrGraham wrote:That's just what I was hoping to hear. Thank you for the clear and concise answer!

One thing I forgot to include -- I have this connected to one of the ethernet ports in my Linksys router, and to ensure call quality, I have the QoS setting for the Ooma's MAC address to highest, so that there is no contention with bursts of other internet traffic impacting voice quality. Even things like LiveMeeting aren't as delay sensitive as voice would be, so that doesn't suffer. Ooma's instructions also have an option where you install it between your modem and router, which enables Ooma to throttle the traffic, but I couldn't get that working with Comcast. So if you try this and it doesn't work, plug it into one of your router ports and use the QoS setting on the router.

While activating the device Ooma technical support informed me that it is defective and needs to be replaced. This is my first bad experience with Woot and hope they avoid such deliveries.

Please send me a replacement.

Greshmahg wrote:Somehow I doubt the problem was with the device itself, but rather your failure to configure QoS on your router.

I am a sys admin in a datacenter, I deal with networking, switches and routing all day. I just received my Ooma. So far, it sucks. There is an audio delay of 850ms each way - 1.6 seconds total. This makes any sort of dynamic conversation impossible. There are hundreds of Ooma customers complaining about it on the Ooma forums. Nothing's been done.

And just to be perfectly clear, my Ooma hub sits between my Comcast modem and my router. So no matter what settings i put in my router, it won't affect anything since the Ooma hub is BEFORE that in the loop. My Comcast connection is 12Mbps down and 4Mpbs up. Definitely not the weak link.

I ordered my ooma VOIP phone. Once I try to test the power supply connection did not see light for the device power up. Tried all different power connection no luck. I am going to return for a full refund.

Hope there should be no problem with the refund since I am a frequent customer for last 4 years. Never ask for any refund before.

Got mine. Message indicator does not work. No Blue light. No blinking orange when there is a message.

Send me one that works!

Got mine today and it is working great. Nice and clear, no noticeable delay. Just set up my account to port my landlines number to ooma! Say no to $43 a month for a landline.

Got mine today. Works great with my DSL. Setup was easy and voice is crystal clear.

I got mine today. I hooked it up behind the router with QOS turned on and it worked without any major issues on my connection with Cox.

Fantastic!!! Received this this last monday. Setup was easy, number porting is in progress. I installed it behind my router! VERY HAPPY! Also I recently saw a Consumer Reports video speaking very highly of Ooma!

Got mine, connected it, went online to activate:

"This activation code does not exist in our system. Please check the label and enter the code again. If you still cannot activate your Ooma device, please call customer service at 1-888-711-6662."

Calling them now, I hope they're open.


Edit: They were there, and Level 2 support fixed the problem, so I was able to activate the device successfully.

took about two weeks to transfer my number. They did say it would take that long to begin the process, so I guess thats fair since its really up to your current provider to transfer the number.

Been using if for about three days now and its worked perfectly. I can not tell the difference between this and the $40 a month VoIP service I used to get from my cable company. My wife spends a lot of time on the phone and we've not had a single performance issue.

I'm very very happy with this so far.