Ooma Core VoIP Phone System
by ooma
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List Price: Our Price: $170.00 You Save: $79.99 (32%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Ooma Core VoIP Phone System
Customer Review: Ooma Unlimited really means Unlimited (for Residential Users)
Summary: 5 Stars
There has been a lot of fuss over what is and what isn't "unlimited" calling. Frankly, it was enough to cause me to hesitate from giving Ooma a try. Admittedly, Ooma has a 3k limit. However, since I have 2 daughters that have the home phones glued to their ears, I was worried that this might be a problem. So I contacted Tami Bhaumik, Vice President,Corporate Marketing and she replied:
"We do have a statement that we have a 3000 minute per month limit; however, this is in place as a safeguard for us against gross abuses. We have never shut a customer down that has gone over the 3000 minute limit. In fact, the vast majority of customers use on average 300-400 minutes per month. What we want to avoid are businesses using our system to run call centers. If a customer is using our product for residential and goes over the 3000 minute limit, we would not shut them down.
For what it's worth, I have a two daughters as well and I certainly know that they are on the phone all of the time as well. We have never exceeded the 3000 minute limit. I hope that this answers your question and I hope that you decide to give us a try. I wish you the very best and again, thank you for taking the time to enquire.
Best regards,
Tami Bhaumik
Vice President,
Corporate Marketing
So, just to clarify, I asked:
"Bobby B" on Amazon who says he works for ooma wrote:
Again, I wouldn't worry about being charged or counting your minutes - if you're using ooma mostly for residential usage, talk all you want.
My concern is "being charged" and counting minutes. If what Bobby B says is true, then as long as my usage is residential, which is all that it will be, then I don't have to worry about watching minutes or being charged if we go over the 3k. Is that correct?
Admittedly, we may never go over anyway, but I just don't want to have to worry about it. I just don't want to regret buying ooma a couple of months after purchase.
Ms. Bhaumik replied:
Bobby B is one of our product managers and he is correct in his statement. In reference to your earlier email, we do not differentiate between LD and local and we do not count minutes on inbound calls. That said, we will not shut you down if you exceed the 3000 limit if you are using it for normal residential usage. Please do not worry. You can sleep soundly knowing that we stand by our product and want you to have a very positive experience.
Tami Bhaumik
Vice President,
Corporate Marketing
So, long story short, I bought Ooma from Amazon and look to save about $40 a month. Set up was extremely simple. The one setback is that I couldn't port my old number. Not a deal breaker. Tried out the LD and sounds great. So far so good. I'm holding on to my current phone service as a back up for a few days, just in case anyone uses my old number. But after that, goodbye phone bills, hello Ooma!
Customer Review: Ooma vs. Vonage
Summary: 5 Stars
I have been a Vonage user for 5 years. I was more or less happy with the service. However, I decided to try a different VoIP service and give Ooma a try.
Ooma rocks.
Let's compare.
1. Price. O++. Ooma is a much better deal -- run the numbers.
2. Quality of Service. O == V. Both are equal. No one on the other line knows I'm on a VoIP phone.
3. Tech Support. V+. Vonage may be a bit better -- 24/7 service. Ooma is biz hours. I've probably had 10 Vonage glitches over the years (their fault) and the tech person was able to resolve them quickly. On one occasion they had to send me new hardware. I've only had Ooma for 2 weeks and called them 3 times. They were good too.
4. Setup. O == V. Both devices essentially set up the same -- easy peasy.
5. Setup Notes. V+. Both devices recommend setting it up this way:
DSL/cable --> Ooma/Vonage gizmo --> your own router.
The alternate setup (for experts) is this:
DSL/cable --> your router --> Ooma/Vonage gizmo
With a high-end Netgear WNR2000 QoS router, Vonage works fine with either setup. With Ooma, the alternate setup does not work satisfactorily for me -- choppy voice when doing downloads simultaneously. I find this to be a minor drawback w/ Ooma.
UPDATE -- I found out that I was setting up my router's QoS incorrectly. I have a 7Mbps DSL and even when doing heavy bittorrent (700KB/s d/l and 75KB/s u/l) when a call comes in, the router's QoS correctly throttles down the bittorrent and calls come in loud and clear. I setup Skype w/ QoS and works fine too. Setup: DSL --> router --> Ooma.
NOTE: If you set it up as ( DSL --> Ooma --> router ), the bittorrent speed is HORRIBLE!!! The Ooma device just can't handle it.
6. Follow-Me Calling. V+. I setup Vonage so that if I don't answer, it will ring an alternate phone number (my cellphone). It works great. However, there is one catch -- it will ring the primary number only 4 times -- and you can't adjust that. Ooma doesn't offer this feature at all. I wish they did.
7. Simultaneous Ring. O+. Ooma offers simultaneous ringing (Multi-Ring) on your main line and an alternate number w/ the $99/yr Premier subscription (as well as other features).
8. Adjustable Number of Rings. O++. With Ooma you can determine how many rings till voicemail kicks in. With Vonage you can't. I know, I've spoken w/ Vonage. When you have a big house, this matters.
9. Checking Voice Mail. O++. Ooma's gizmo behaves like an answering machine -- press a button to read your messages. With Vonage, you have to check your messages via the website or pick up the phone to call in. Ooma is more convenient.
10. Do Not Disturb. O == V. Ooma's Premier service has this feature. With Vonage it's standard.
11. Side Note -- 808. O++. Ooma offers a Hawaii (808) phone number for $30/yr. Vonage has never offered 808.
Customer Review: You don't have to be an Engineer or Accountant to figure this one out...
Summary: 5 Stars
* Plug and Play - easy to install, anyone can do it. The Quick Start Guide is well organized and very easy to follow.
* Less than half a year payback on your investment AND NO MORE PHONE BILLS. (You don't have to be an accountant to do the math even if you want to replace Vonage).
The system is very simple to use. The User Guide is well organized and very comprehensive.
The hardware has a nice quality feel to it. Both the Hub and Scout have large buttons with big symbols (for my big fingers and bad eyes).
You will see a lot of flashing red lights when the Hub is configuring itself (it worried me, but after several minutes the blue light came on and the installation was complete and the dial tone was there).
The sound quality is amazingly clear.
I noticed it is not necessary to dial a 1 before the area code (similar to cell phones).
INTERNET CONNECTION
We use it in combination with our Comcast Broadband Cable connection.
OPERATING COST
Like some of the other services (Magic Jack), Ooma DOES NOT require a PC to be on all the time which otherwise may cost you $75 - $120/year plus wear and tear.
Based on the transformer rating I estimate the Ooma Hub will cost $5 to $10/year to operate. It is nice and cool (in contrast, the Aaris modem from Comcast is hot as a toaster).
FAX
I have called to have our regular phone service terminated. I did not call until I had verified that our Fax machine worked. The fax works without any problems when you plug it into a regular phone splitter (they even included one in the box). As an alternative you can connect it to any of the existing phone plugs in the house (which we have connected to the Hub). Don't use a Scout to connect the Fax machine.
Note: We don't use the our fax for incoming faxes; we have them come in via e-mail for $1/month using Faxaway.com
By the way all your existing phones in the house will work after you connect it to the Hub (in other words you don't need the Scout(s)). However then you don't benefit from the Scout's simple user interface and features.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Some of the cable modems are equipped with a backup battery (ours was no exception) unplugging it will not reset the modem. In other words these modems will not find your Ooma Hub upon power up.
Solution:
You simply have to press the Reset button on the back of the modem for the Ooma Hub to communicate with the modem. Subsequently the Ooma Hub will configure itself automatically after you turn the PC on.
THIS PRODUCT IS A WINNER; THE TEAM AT OOMA HAS DONE A GREAT JOB.
UPDATE...Feb 16, 2009
We have now terminated our Comcast phone service. They replaced the Aaris modem with a new RCA DCM425. It is cool (cold to the touch = low engergy consumption).
NOTE: You have to press the reset button for 15 sec on the modem AFTER power has been turned off (or else it will not find the Hub).
Customer Review: My initial experience with Ooma
Summary: 5 Stars
Just happened to stumble across the Telo product on a website last week, and was immediately drawn to it. For many years we've been tired of paying for two landlines to our home (~$60/month), and this looked pretty good. After reading comments here and elsewhere, we bought a Telo from the local Fry's here in Oregon.
Setup was very clean, and the audio sounded nice. But after digging a bit deeper we discovered that this Telo is a single-line replacement, although with the Premium service one can temporarily call up a second line. But we had two lines in the house we wanted to replace, one for personal and one for business.
Turns out the slightly-older Hub could do exactly what we wanted, when paired up with a Scout. Back to Fry's we went, and they fortunately had what we were looking for (they're discontinued, and getting harder to find).
I have to admit, the Hub setup instructions seemed baffling to me, what with all the various options and diagrams. All we wanted was to kill our landline service and splice Ooma in place, but some negative reviews gave the impression that you needed a Scout for every phone in the house. Not so. They need to re-write the instructions, but now with it discontinued I guess that point is moot. We won't be using the voicemail feature.
Incidentally, Ooma suggests putting the box just after your broadband modem and in front of the router/WiFi box for the house, so that if there is ever a contention for traffic your VOIP data will prevail. I elected instead to just plug the Ooma ethernet cable into one of the empty slots on our D-Link router. Absolutely no quality issues, even when downloading in parallel with using the phone. Oh, I have the router set up for MAC filtering, so we did have to load the MAC address, but that took all of one minute.
Incidentally, for any location that has "E911" service (apparently pretty much everywhere these days) then Ooma works like a regular 911 service. If you dial 911 Ooma automatically forwards your name and address to the 911 center.
Anyway, we are now on the schedule to port over our two numbers to Ooma, and we will still use DSL (a "dry line") to deliver 1.5Mbit service to the house. We'll see how it goes, but so far it's looking great. Break-even should be in about 5 months, then just $10/month afterwards for two lines. Sweet.
UPDATE 25 Feb 2010:
My two numbers ported over to Ooma earlier today. The landlines went dead for incoming calls this morning, and the numbers showed up on the Ooma boxes about 4 hours later. Voice quality is excellent, everything appears to be perfectly normal, and if it continues I'll be pocketing $60/mo, so breakeven in about 5 months, then gravy.
UPDATE 10 Mar 2010:
Both phone lines in constant use, along with our computers. Everything works fine, voice quality appears to be same as POTS, saving $60 a month.
Customer Review: Finally a phone *service* not a tax
Summary: 5 Stars
We looked at ooma when it first came out, but at $450 it seemed too expensive for us at the time. Now that ooma has a new business model and our ATT bills have gone up, the numbers made more sense. With only $200 for initial cost, and $100/year if we wanted the Premier services, we could try for a while and see if it worked. Our phone bills were typically $70 per month or more.
Here's the logic we used:
1) local phone service with CLID, CW, etc. is costing us $30/month. We'd want to keep a basic landline for 911 just for a while, but it does seem as thought high-speed internet services are becoming as reliable as the telephone system (congestion issues aside). We'd probably drop those costs to $15-20 per month.
2) National long-distance is costing us $15/month, and would be free via ooma
3) We're on an international plan with ATT that gets us per-minute prices comparable to ooma, but costing us $5/mo.
Overall, we'd probably save $35-40 per month on ooma. The initial cost would take us 5-6 months to break even, and with Premier, we'd need another 2-3 months per year. So the first year would save us only 3-5months worth at $35-40. In the second year, it gets much better.
So -- now that we decided it's financially viable, we had to check out ease of use. There are many discussions on the web around various limitations of the service. Probably the biggest concern is the distributed termination concept originally announced by ooma. Personally, I think they had a great idea there, but it certainly had it's risks, and I don't believe anyone can build a device that will 100% identify any security threats. With more hunting, I found announcements from ooma that their local termination was no longer used. Fully reassured, I decided to go for it.
Installation and registration were incredibly simple. The Premier trial is a nice way to learn about other services. Initially, we started with a local line connected to the hub, but since the voice quality is outstanding on ooma, we've decided to move our old number across and get a new local number for 911. That also allows you to take advantage of the Premier services more fully. We did not originally intend to get a second ooma number, but now that it's available to us, we're starting to see how it could be useful. We're going to put a second line into the guest room.
Overall, I couldn't be happier with the service -- very user friendly interface and really good voice quality.
The only addition I'd like is the ability to use Bluetooth headsets or direct digital connected phones with ooma. It's a shame to have an analog connection for your home phone which then does A/D conversion for the DECT wireless link. Voice quality should improve slightly with the new "telo" basestation announced at 2009 CES. Hope it gets Bluetooth too!
Michael