from Niles, Ohio

If you're looking at this, you're likely looking at alternatives to your land line phone. If that's the case, you're on the right trail.

After getting the latest AT&T phone bill with yet another increase in prices, I started looking for alternatives. I mean $82 for phone and "pro" level Internet access is significant. So I went to BestBuy and picked up this Ooma device and brought it home. On speedtest.net, my DSL feed showed 2.74mb download and 374kb upload. Hooking up the Ooma device was painless and within about 3 minutes, I had my new phone number to test things out with.

In doing some testing, there was a noticeable delay. It's similar to the delay most get on a cell phone, but this was bit worse. After doing lots of research, I came to the conclusion that my internet feed was too slow. Even with the delay, I decided that $38/month for my landline phone was too much, so I started proceeding with the "port" process to transfer my home phone number to Ooma. Then I hit a speed bump - if you have DSL and a landline phone on the same line, you need to call the phone company and have them separate your Internet connection to a "dry loop" so it won't get dropped when the phone company transfers your phone number.

I figured if I'm going to go through all that trouble and still be stuck with slow internet speeds, it's time to just throw AT&T completely out. I checked around and subscribed to RoadRunner's "up to 10mb/s" product. They came out a week later and hooked things up, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I often get over 30mb/s download speeds and 960kb/s upload speeds. We tried Ooma again and the delays were greatly reduced.

The day after they installed the cable Internet feed, I continued with Ooma's phone porting process. Just 5 calendar days later (including a weekend,) my number was switched over with no hassles at all. Voice quality is great.

They tell you to put the Ooma "in front of" your router (which means between your modem and your router.) That will work with most homes, but not mine since I have some inbound traffic. So I have mine set up behind the router and even replaced my very old router with one that understands QoS packets (a Linksys wireless router with Tomato firmware.)

I don't think that most people will need to go through that much trouble, but I wanted to tweak it to be "just right" in my home. It is working fantastic for us, and I'm looking forward to saving over $40/month now and yet have an internet connection 13 times faster than I used to have.

Here were some cons that I found along the way:
*There are no handsets with this device and some of the "advanced" functionality only works with their handsets, and their handsets aren't the greatest. They're expensive and they feel cheap.
*For good voice quality, you need a good Internet connection. From what others have said, it should be a download speed of 6mb/s or more and an upload speed of 512kb/s or more.
*Ooma's technical support cannot answer more advanced questions and they made no effort to find out. They just kept pointing me to sites others made which did not address the very specific technical questions I had. I had to find out myself using trial-and-error methods.

With that extremely long write-up, the summary is: If "almost as good as your normal phone" is acceptable, then this is for you. The web page for setup couldn't be much more simple, and everything is extremely easy to set up.

In my case, the $38/month portion of my phone bill was reduced to $3.47/month (you still have to pay for 911 service and taxes.) Ooma's service is free, but Uncle Sam still manages to get his money.

What's great about it: Easy to set up, good aesthetics, good voice quality.

What's not so great: Initial expense can cause some pain. Requires a fast internet connection. Can be issues if you have DSL and phone.

I would recommend this to a friend!

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Customer Rating

Say good-bye to AT&T

on August 1, 2012

Posted by: Bitgod

from Sacramento,CA

So I've been hanging onto my phone land line mainly because of the combination of "it just works" and not wanting to lose my phone number.

I just found out that with these VOIP systems, you CAN port your phone number over, so basically the trade-off is saving money with the loss of reliability. In my case though, I'm not a heavy phone user, and I was tired of paying AT&T $32 a month for little use.

Ooma's cost is mainly up front, though there's still a <$5 a month fee for fed, state, & local taxes, so that can't be helped. Regardless, this will pay for itself in less than a year. If you want want more features, you can purchase their premium level. I went ahead and did that for my first year, since the $40 cost of porting my number over will get waived, so that's half to a third of the cost right there. (As it turned out, I got the premium for $99 instead of the $120)

Anyway, make sure you have reliable internet service first. Then get one of these units and try it out for a few weeks, make some calls, make sure the sound quality works for you. When you decide to keep it, you can contact Ooma to start the port process.

Anyway, I'm VERY happy with my Ooma, I'm going to tell everyone I know about it. The sound quality and options are great.

What's great about it: Good quality, more features for less cost, can port phone #

What's not so great: Loss of basic copper reliability

I would recommend this to a friend!

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Customer Rating

It works well... for awhile

on March 20, 2012

Posted by: Schbrownie

from Illinois

To be fair, on the plus side, the device did work as advertised while it actually worked.

So I've had the Ooma Telo now for for a little under a year and half and it just stopped working. The unit is "dead" (per Ooma's tech support). After declaring it was dead, the tech support guy I spoke with quickly passed me on to their customer service department. They told me that I could buy a new unit for $199... but since I was a repeat customer, they could offer me a deal at $179! great deal!

The $14.00 per month bill is pretty decent, but others do better. If you amortize hardware cost ($200/16 months = $12.50/month), the total cost gets closer to $30/month... which is the same price as land line phones!

I would highly suggest that anyone thinking about this product should do a Google search and they will find many customers with stories similar to this one... Ooma's customer support is, unfortunately, lacking in desire to actually help customers.

For this reason, I will not be buying another Ooma device and would not recommend it to anyone.

What's great about it: low monthly bill

What's not so great: short product life which leads to higher (average) monthly cost

No, I would not recommend this to a friend.

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Customer Rating

Ooma-size me!

on September 15, 2010

Posted by: ObiMatt87

from San Antonio, TX

I'm now an Ooma convert! I researched this product (and other digital phone options) over the last year while I was deployed and as we moved and got set up in a new home decided to take the plunge and get one instead of a traditional land line. I had a little apprehension about how well it would work, but after reading a million positive personal reviews decided it was worth a go.

Our previous service was through AT&T for a basic, basic phone service, with only 200 mins of long distance a month and no caller ID or other bells and whistles. That met our needs, but after surcharges, taxes, and other fees, that "basic" service was almost $50 each month! I was determined to find something that was cheaper and offered more features, particularly not having to worry about long distance minutes.

So....got the Telo, established cable internet service (You DO want it to be fast enough, but today most cable/DSL service should be just fine), and followed the instructions to hook 'er up. Experience with the different stages:

PACKAGING: Nicely done. Classy, and well laid out.

INSTRUCTIONS: Basic fold-out sheet designed to allow anyone to hook it up. I'm pretty tech-saavy, but it would not have mattered. Anyone can follow the well-thought-out instructions. Seriously.

ACCOUNT AND HARDWARE SET-UP: If your internet service is established, everything you need will already be in place. You just plug this in between the source outlet and your cable/DSL modem. All hardware parts you need for the Telo itself are included (Basically just an Ethernet cable and power cable). You can use ANY phone with this system. I plugged our old base station into the Telo and our regular phones work just great. Just turn off the answering machine if your base has one, as the Telo will serve that purpose, and tends to be much clearer anyway!

You WILL need access to the internet during set-up to establish your phone number, so make sure you've got your computer fired up. I was using our laptop wirelessly at the time, and it worked great.

When you go online to the Ooma site to set up your new account and pick a phone number, we found the process to be very smooth. You're given a choice of numbers after you choose the area code you want (love that feature) or you can choose to have your old number ported from your legacy service, which takes a few weeks. We went new, picked one, and voila! we were in business instantly.

You WILL need your credit card handy when you establish the account, as you WILL have to pay the federal taxes/fees for your area. You can get an estimate of these by punching in your ZIP on the Ooma site. For us, it will be $3.47 a month. Woo hoo! I'll take that over $50 a month any day. Even if you keep the Premier features (you get a free 60-day trial upon set-up), that's still only $10 more a month). Those additional features and associated fees are what Ooma is basing its business model on, so hopefully they'll keep making enough to stay in business. They've lasted since 2007 or so, so something must be working. Either way, I'll have this bad boy paid off in 6 months based on savings alone, so no worries!

CALL QUALITY: So far, everything has worked as advertised right out of the box. One thing I have noticed--and truly no BS--the call clarity is excellent. I find that ironic, considering we had a dedicated phone line before, but it really is good. Every once and a while we have noticed a tiny delay, kind of like a cell phone delay, but not always. Believe I'll look at tweaking the settings per what folks have written about with regard to the QoS stuff. Minor issue at the most.

BOTTOM LINE: No dealing with the phone company, no more worries about large bills, and many more features than we ever had before. I love being able to be anywhere on the road and dial in either via phone or the Ooma site itself and check phone messages. Really simple, very clear, and just works great.

Thanks, Ooma dudes, for a great product.

What's great about it: Easy set-up, low bills, clarity of calls, quality of build

What's not so great: Nada

I would recommend this to a friend!

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Customer Rating

Unbelievable Value

on September 28, 2011

Posted by: WaterBug

from Syracuse, NY

When I first learned about Ooma, I was skeptical. I spent three months researching int. When I finally purchased it, I did so because of Best Buy's and Ooma's 30 day return guarantee. So, I knew I had nothing to lose.

After bringing it home, it only took me about 20 minutes to get it up and running. Ooma provides a 30 day trial of their premier service, which includes a second phone number. The allow you to choose from a list of available numbers from almost all, if not all states in the US. So, I chose one New York area code and number and one from Colorado. The Colorado number enabled friends I have there to dial a number local to them (only seven digits) and reach me in New York.

I tried Ooma for only one week before I was totally sold out on it. I then "ported" (transferred my regular phone number from the phone company I had at the time to Ooma).

I did have some slight echo and delay at first, but soon learned that the problem is easily adjusted in settings to match my internet speed and other conditions. This may be what some people who have been unhappy with Ooma needed to do.

I have had my Ooma for three months now. I did purchase their Premier services which allowed me to keep my second number and a few other features. By paying for a full year in advance ($119.00), Ooma waived the $40.00 porting fee. Other than that, I have only been charged $3.57 per month. This is the Federal mandated 911 surcharge and other fees.

I disconnected the old phone company's Interface from the distribution hub for my house phone jacks. This enabled me to plug Ooma in one of them, and have all the other wired phones in the house to ring when I get a call I can answer from any of them. I can also check my voice mail from any of them by simply dialing my own phone number.

Some of the reviews here are talking about the Ooma handset (sold separately). That is separate from the Ooma base. I would not give the handset a very good rating. The only thing I use it for is so I can use both phone lines for different calls. That can only be done with the hand set. You can still use more than one phone for the same call (same phone line).

What's great about it: Free caller ID and Call Forwarding

What's not so great: Nothing (again speeking of the base, not the handset)

I would recommend this to a friend!

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Customer Rating

Make sure you check you internet connection first

on February 19, 2010

Posted by: BNinCA

from Altadena, CA

When you use the internet, you are usually concerned only with speed. But with voice over ip (VOIP) other parameters also matter. We have a cable modem which delivers 7 MBps download and 1 MBps upload: better than requirements and better than average. Yet, with our Ooma device, often people complain that the sound coming from our side is choppy and unintelligible. I called Ooma tech support and they asked me what the jitter was. You can check this parameter by going to http://myvoipspeed.visualware.com/ and selecting the "VoIP Quality Test". A jitter of < 5 ms is required by Ooma. Well, the jitter we experience is anywhere from 1 ms to 67 ms depending on the time of day and other traffic on the internet. Our ISP, Charter cable, doesn't support jitter performance so there is no remedy.

What's great about it: Elegant design

What's not so great: Very dependent on insternet connection quality

No, I would not recommend this to a friend.

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Customer Rating

Quality bargain Voip

on November 27, 2009

Posted by: steve0617

from ossining, ny

If you have reliable high speed internet service and are looking to keep a home phone # for cheap Ooma is the way to go. It is easily setup - plug it into your cable modem and router using the simple diagram. Go to their website to create an account. You can choose a new phone # or port over you current number for a fee. If you go with a new number you will be ready to use it in minutes. For me the quality has been nearly as good as my cable company's phone service was and since I have a reliable high speed internet service I've had no phone service issues in the 2 months I've been using Ooma. The quality is good, faxing has not been a problem, no need for a computer other than to manage you account or any special phone handsets. I have an all-in-one printer/fax that I plug the phone line from Ooma into then plug the phone line out into the main base of the 2.4GHz wireless handsets I have. You can listen to voicemail online, using your phone by calling into voicemail like you would your cell phone or just pushing play on the Ooma device like you would an old fashioned answering machine. The best thing is there is no additional cost once you buy the box - all the main features you'd expect are included like voicemail and caller id. If you want some of the extra premier features such as 3 way calling, special rings, block lists, etc. you can get that for just $9.99/month. Their website lays out the included features and the premier features. I was asked about hooking up a home alarm since I do not have one I did not look into this but sure its on their website and if not just ask them. Overall a nice cost effective way to keep a home phone.

What's great about it: eliminates phone bills while giving good quality

What's not so great: dependent on the quality of your internet service

I would recommend this to a friend!

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Customer Rating

Not Compatible With AT&T DSL

on August 18, 2011

Posted by: Srockgibson

from San Ramon, CA

I was super excited about getting rid of my land line. I'm pretty tech savvy, so I thought this was a no brainer. Not so!! I spent an entire day trying to get this work with AT&T DSL to no avail.

The most common AT&T DSL setup across the country is the 2Wire 2701HG-B combination modem/router/wireless gateway (the one sold at Best Buy when you sign up for AT&T DSL service).

Anyway, it turns out, that both the Ooma device and the 2wire device both need primary access to incoming DSL signal. Ooma tech support was not helpful at all. Confusing automated phone tree. Long wait. Very poor English speaking technical skills. They can only follow a set decision tree of "help steps." They didn't even seem to understand the concept of a combination modem/router/wireless gateway.

Finally, I found several internet "self help" forums, and discovered that many other people had tried Ooma with this AT&T modem with poor/no success. I suggest you google "Ooma" + "your modem/router" before you purchase.

What's great about it: Concept

What's not so great: Doesn't Work With AT&T DSL

No, I would not recommend this to a friend.

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