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Since my last update, I've since learned that if new users buy the older Hub and Scout system, rather than the new Telo unit, you'll still get basic voice mail for free, without having to order Premier service, and won't have to pay the $12 annual regulatory fees. The new Telo unit is not getting very good reviews, especially with the new higher rates and less features included in the basic services. Stores are still selling the Ooma Hub and Scout system, so my advice to new users who don't need all the extra features is to get the older system, save money and you'll still get basic voice mail for free (they charge extra for enhanced VM). See »www.ooma.com/legal/rates for a comparison of rates between the older and new Ooma systems. 10/2/09 update Ooma just made MAJOR CHANGES to their prices and terms of service yesterday, and it's no longer as good of deal for new customers (existing customers are grandfathered in). There are many new fees and price increases, and they are trying to get more people to sign up for and pay for Premier service by making voice mail only available if you pay extra for Premier service. If people wondered how Ooma would make money with their original pricing structure, now we know ... they weren't planning on keeping it forever. Probably wanted to originally give a good deal and get a lot of customers to pay large upfront costs (buying the Ooma equipment) to cover the company's start-up costs, and then they must have planned to change the pricing structure eventually so they make more money. Anyway, to update my review, I have had the service for about 6 months now and am very happy with it. Only had two outages that I know about, and one could have been my ISP's fault. So the service has been very dependable. My only complaint is the same as I mentioned earlier: that on the majority of phone calls, and especially when talking to people who are on a cell phone, there is an annoying voice delay, which sometimes leads to both parties talking over each other. That hasn't gotten any better, but I guess I've learned to live with it. One major problem I had with support was when I got both lines set up and they had my outgoing Caller ID wrong on the lines. After about 4-5 calls over many weeks of talking to various support people who all promised to write up a ticket and get it fixed, it never got fixed until we called and asked for a supervisor. Then the supervisor finally took care of it. I found that many of the earlier support people never made out a repair ticket for it, so if you ever call support, get a ticket # so you can call back and refer to it. If your problem hasn't been resolved after a couple calls, be sure to ask for a support supervisor. All in all, I'm pleased with my Ooma service. I'm just glad I got in on the original pricing deal. I was encouraging a relative to get Ooma service, but will not anymore because of the new terms and prices that require you to get Premier service if you want Voice Mail. Some people just want Voice Mail but don't want all the other features that come with Premier. Ooma may still be a good deal for some, but probably not for those people who just want basic phone service and voice mail. 5/11/09 update I had my number ported over. They give you the choice of submitting your paperwork by e-mail or fax. I did it by e-mail. Big mistake! After 10 days of not hearing anything back, I called, and they claimed they didn't receive it. Of course, this is the company who reviewers previously said does not respond to e-mail technical support requests (even though they say you can email them your tech support inquiries), so I guess I should have known that their porting dept. doesn't respond to email at all. So after I called their porting dept. and they said they didn't receive my paperwork, I faxed everything to them. After that, my porting went smoothly, took about 3 wks from when I faxed it. So my recommendation to others is to not email Ooma anything ... they'll say they never rec'd it. Otherwise service has been good. Haven't noticed any outages since my last entry, about a month ago. Tech support now usually answers within a couple minutes of being on hold ... much better than it used to be. I've had mixed success with tech support -- depends on who you get. Some are good at fixing problems and following up, others are worthless. For instance, my outgoing caller ID was wrong and my blacklisting wasn't working consistently (some blacklisted numbers were still getting through) and the tech support guy couldn't fix either. He said he was sending the Caller ID issue to provisioning, but nothing got corrected. For the blacklisting problem, he had me recheck and resubmit the blacklisting options on Ooma's control panel (the Lounge) and said that should fix it, but it didn't. Overall, though, things are good with Ooma. the minor problems are worth the savings. 4/14/09 update I experienced their first outage yesterday, which lasted for most of the afternoon. According to their support forums, it looked like it affected a large portion of the country, if not all subscribers. When my service was down, calls went to Voice Mail. However, you also could not log into your control panel to change your settings (such as setting Multi Ring so calls go to other phones). On the forums, people said they couldn't call into support, neither, although I didn't try that. I suppose their support people are using Ooma lines as well. Other call issues: I think I'm just getting more sensitive to this voice delay because I'm listening for it and noticing it on the majority of calls. It's really noticeable when talking to people who are on a cell phone, but is still noticeable when talking to people on most landlines, all over the country, and really noticeable when talking to Ooma support, probably because they're using Ooma too. There's always a noticeable pause (more than their should be) when you end a sentence, before the other person hears it and talks back. Most people may not notice this, but I do and I wish they could fix it because it is annoying and does lead to both people occasionally talking over each other. However, I've noticed this on all VOIP services I've tried in the past. My latency and VOIP quality tests I've run show there should be no problems, so it must just be inherent to VOIP lines. It's just something you have to get used to, I guess. But this pause is distracting when talking on the phone and if a VOIP provider could figure out how to eliminate this, I'd switch to that provider, if it was similarly priced. Also, I signed up for Premier service and began the process of porting my number. This leads to another negative at Ooma: they don't have numbers available in all area codes. For the 2nd line, I'm looking for a number in the heavily populated 952 area code (suburban Minneapolis) and they don't have one, and support tells me it'll be a month before they get some more numbers in that area code. I think a provider as big as Ooma should really offer a better selection of numbers in all area codes, and at the very least, all of the heavily populated ones. Overall, I'm still happy with Ooma, but am discovering a few more of its shortcomings! ***************** 4/2/09 Update The last couple days I've noticed a voice delay in Ooma when calling various people on cell phones, and occassionally when talking with people who are using landlines, in various parts of the country. Because of that, I changed my rating for "Call Quality" to 4 stars instead of the 5 that I gave them previously. When talking to someone, there's a noticable pause before you can hear what they say back. This leads to talking over each other. Hope this is just a temporary glitch with Ooma. Today it's better. ************************ ORIGINAL REVIEW A couple years ago I tried SunRocket, but cancelled during the 30 day trial due to the bad call quality, a couple months before they went out of business. Then I tried MagicJack last year, returned that, and tried Voipo last month, but had issues there (see my review in that category) and cancelled during my trial. Now, after one week of trying Ooma, my early impressions are that I think it is the best of all the VOIP providers I've tried, and is almost as good as a landline in quality and ease of use, and probably better, when price is factored in. I bought my Ooma equipment at Best Buy. It's easy to set up and use. Surprisingly, when I was setting up my service, they didn't have any numbers available in my 952 area code, which is a heavily populated area code in suburban Minneapolis. I took a temporary # in a neighboring area code, but had to wait a few days and one became available in my area code, so I finally got one. But they really should have a better supply of phone numbers in various area codes, especially well populated ones. I read reviews about Ooma's horrendous wait times for support, so I braced for the worst when i had to call them about the area code problem. My wait times when calling support over the past week have averaged about 20-25 minutes, so it sounds like maybe it's improving compared to earlier reviews. But of course that could still be better. Ooma has a nice website with lots of documentation and a good forum. I recommend trying to get answers to your questions in the forum before calling support. Call quality has been very good so far. On just one call, I heard echo, but that only lasted the first 5 seconds of the call. There was also one call where I noticed a voice delay, but that was with a person on a cell phone, so I don't know whose network was at fault. All the other calls I've made and received were as good as a landline in sound quality. The Ooma devices (the hub and the scout) that your phone plugs into have a nice feature in that they have a blue light that is on as long as you're connected to the Ooma network. If the network is down, your ISP is down, or you have done something wrong on your end in connecting the devices, the blue light will turn red, and then you know you can't make or receive calls. Since that light is on all the time on the devices, either red or blue, you always know the status of your Ooma phone line and whether it's working or not. In the week I've had service, it's never been down ... so reliability has been excellent so far. I'll test this a bit longer, and if it keeps performing well, I will likely port my # to Ooma. So far this has been the best VOIP service of the 4 I've tried out. It's also easy to use, especially with the digital answering machine, and nice for those who aren't very tech savvy ... so for instance if you have elderly parents or grandparents, and can set it up for them, then they should be able use it without problems. Of course, the biggest potential downfall to this service is that it is a new company and you never know if they are going to pull a SunRocket, and go out of business, leaving you with no phone service and $250 worth of useless gadgets. In a recent article I read, the CEO said he expects the company will be profitable by the fourth quarter of 2009. Of course, they won't tell you if they are hurting financially because they don't want that to impact sales. But if it stays in business, it could catch on big. Some have wondered about the viability of Ooma's business model, but I don't see that as being a problem. They are getting their subscribers to pay big bucks up front, so they can pay for what must be huge business start up costs. And then, many subscribers will go on to buy the premium service for another $99 a year, and others will be paying for international calls. They'll probably count on people upgrading their Ooma equipment to something newer and better with more features, every couple years, as well. And if they still aren't making money, they can always start charging new customers a monthly fee (no longer offering a free service option), but hopefully they'll let people with the older devices continue with the free option for as long as their equipment lasts. So just because they are offering free service now, doesn't mean they will when they issue their future generations of Ooma devices. Followup comments:
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I have spent several months reviewing all of the well know VoIP services out there. I want to terminate my Verizon line in February so I can save some money. I have been looking for the combination of an inexpensive, reliable service, with good voice quality. After reading so many excellent reviews of Ooma's voice quality, I began spending more time researching their products. There is obviously some uncertainty regarding Ooma's future and business plan, but I decided it was worth the gamble. Ooma has come out with a new product called Telo. With the launch of Telo, they have also changed their TOS. Users of the Telo device will need to pay a $11.75 per year recovery fee, beginning in year 2, to cover E911 and taxes. Ooma also removed voicemail and Caller ID with Name from the basic plan. Caller ID is still included, but without name. To get voicemail, CNAM, and many other features, user's will need to subscribe to Ooma premier at $12.99 per month or $119 per year. Since the Ooma Core product still goes by the old TOS, even when purchased new,I decided to purchase one. It is unlikely that will need any of the advanced features, so I will never receive a bill from Ooma. There is a one time fee of $39.99 to port a number. The Core unit comes with a Hub and Scout. I will probably sell the Scout on eBay, as I will not be using it. If I get $30 for the Scout, my total investment will be $225, $185 + $40 to port my number in February. If Ooma stays in business for next year, I will have covered this cost by what I'm saving in terminating my Verizon line. If Ooma stays in business longer than a year, it's all gravy. By the way, the Telo units appear to be selling very well on both Amazon and Buy.com. This is good news to Ooma users.They are also available in many of the big name stores, including Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Radio Shack, Newegg.com, etc. After receiving my Core unit 5 days after my online purchase, I activated it and was making calls within about 15 minutes. The installation was simple. I put it behind my Verizon FiOS Actionec Router, connected a phone line, and powered it on. The first call I made was to my brother in California. After about 20 minutes, I asked him how the call sounded. He said it sounded fine, why was I asking? I told him I was calling him on my new Ooma line. The call sounded crystal clear on my end as well. I was using a $15 Vtech portable, not a high quality phone, but it sounded good. I've made and received several calls since and all have been flawless, including those to/from mobile phones. I also have a Voip.ms account and use their value routing. I believe the Ooma calls do sound clearer than Voip.ms value calls. I am impressed with the quality of this product, and will continue using it as much as possible before my Verizon line is terminated. I'm sure it helps that I have a very stable Verizon FiOS 10/5 internet connection that has never gone down in the 31 months I've had it. Since I have yet to have any contact with Ooma Technical Support or Customer Service, I gave them a neutral 3 rating. I will update this review in the future as needed. Followup comments:
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The sound quality is great, no problems so far. (Note: the person you called is the one who is the judge here, as what he hears is what the system is uploading from your location, which will be the slower broadband speed--) I did experience not being able to access the web site "my.ooma" area for about a week after the website was upgraded on Oct 1, 2009. This has been resolved, and it does appear that their support is working through the problems that others are reporting in their forums. The customer service in the Philippines was very polite but didn't know anything except what was in their scripts and could not help with problems. Problems seem to be best handled my emailing the support team on the ooma.com site. At this time I am not intending to port any numbers over, as I do appreciate the solid service of POTS (and solid 911 service!) One more thing: they have changed the premier costs and what is included in the basic service. (According to a post in their forums, this will not affect me--) (About the "fair warning" attached to this post: I joined in 2003 and discovered about a week ago that I got booted off (deactivated) for not asking any questions or giving out opinions (etc) for a while --oh well) ----------- Oct 10th: Above updated to reflect resolution of problems caused by upgrade of website on Oct 1st. (original review sections reflected more on website upgrade caused log-in problems rather than general review of Ooma experience) Oct 12th: corrected spelling errors Followup comments:
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We had a very basic home phone to allow all our friends and family to have a central number to call us, but mostly we used our mobiles for outgoing calls. I've never thought using microwaves near one's head was great, so any reduction in mobile phone use is a good thing. Throw in excellent call quality, great voicemail, cheap international calling, and unlimited calls in the US (ok, up to 5,000 minutes out going), and this thing is a bargain. We pay $99/year for premier. That gives us free porting of our home number (a $40 charge without premier), emails of voicemails, and best of all, instant extra line. If ooma can hang in for the next 14 months, we'll be ahead of the game, while enjoying much better telephone service. Followup comments:
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************************ Ooma completed my port 10/02. There was about a 6 hour period during the port where we couldn't receive incoming calls, but the problem resolved itself. I've updated my rating of Ooma a bit because their new website no longer hangs all the time and Ooma did eventually follow through on the porting. As far as the service itself, my family can't tell that we are no longer with the local phone company. The call quality and caller ID are identical. Also, now that Ooma has started charging more for premier as well as passing regulatory fees onto new customers I feel they are more likely to survive. By not having to pay these fees myself I feel a little less sting about having to go through the poor porting process. Update 9/22 ************************ I still haven't received the email I was promised in 48-72 hours. I called again and this time was told that all they needed was my landline account number. Why they didn't just ask for this when I filled out my online port request or the last time I was on the phone with them is beyond me. They took the number over the phone and said I should see an email letting me know of my port date in the next 5 days. We'll see. Update 9/17 ************************ So after getting all setup, I went online and paid for a number port. I got a email with a pdf "Letter of Agreement" showing all my telco account info and that I'd authorized the port. The email also said I'd receive an update within 5 business days giving me an estimated date of completion. Well, I've been busy and today I finally had some time to try and find out how my port was going (I'd heard nothing). I called their number port hotline and it was picked up by a hispanic lady who was absolutely lost. I suspect it was her first day on the job and she'd had no training whatsoever. She put me on hold after every single question and came back with a generic response to anything asked. She claimed they had sent me an additional email asking for more account information Sept. 3. This is pure B.S. I received over a thousand emails that week and not one of them was from Ooma. She said they'd email it again in 48-72 hours. I asked why should couldn't email me what I needed right now and after putting me on hold for 3 minutes came back and asked me why I'd want it so quick and that they couldn't do it. WTF Ooma???? I'm giving Ooma 1 more week and then this thing is going back to where I bought it. Original Review ************************ I've been on the VOIP sidelines for a while watching people fight with poor service and finally decided it was time to take the plunge. I read through a ton of reviews and researched everything out before ordering my Ooma. I got it from Newegg ($229 shipped) on a combo deal where they also gave $40 off on a Linksys WRT54GL router ($7 after the discount). After registering online, I plugged the Ooma in between my cable modem a desktop. It blinked red for about 3 minutes and then went blue. I plugged a phone in and immediately got a dial tone and made a call. Total setup time was about 10 minutes, most of which was choosing what temporary phone number I wanted to use. My maximum Comcast internet speed is about 30Mbps down and 10Mbps up with their Powerboost. If I exceed 6M down/1M up for more than a couple of minutes continuously, then I get throttle back to 6M/1M. I was really hoping to not have to use the router for QoS because doing so would mean that I would have to limit everything to the throttled back speeds and not full available snappiness of my connection. This seems like a waste. Well, my worries are gone. The QoS in the Ooma box is awesome. After adjusting the upload rate in the Ooma QoS to 1Mbps I can get full 30M/10M when I’m not on a call and get 30M/1M during calls. I’ve tried downloading 6 simultaneous Linux ISO torrents. Without the Omma box inline after the connection throttles back to 6M/1M and my cable modem chokes and I can’t even surf the internet. However, going through the Ooma hub I still get decent call quality (just a tad more line delay) and can still surf the web under the same load (throttled back 6M/1M) at 8:00pm when Comcast is totally choked. As for the Linksys router, I still need it for other purpsoses, but I'm leaving QoS to the Ooma for now. I have a strong background in DSP and voice codecs (cordless phone design) and have a very sensitive ear to artifacts. I wouldn’t say that Ooma is up to POTS standards, but it is as good as good or better than any of the other VOIP codecs out there that don’t rely on guaranteed QoS. I can hear the noise floor (static hiss on the line) rise occasionally when packets are dropped. But it is very minor. FYI, my online VOIP tests tell me my download QoS is horrible (20-60%). My incoming TCP delay averages 80ms and often spikes to 160ms or worse. I don’t know why everyone is so worried about Ooma’s business plan. It isn’t anymore a ponzi scheme than Tivo was when it first came out. Yes, they get their revenue primarily from sales of new boxes, but they are getting a good percentage of new customers signing up for the premier service at $99/year. Considering the cost of the Ooma boxes, Ooma Premier is one of the most expensive VOIP services out there. Ooma's real business plan is to sell expensive VOIP hubs. There is no end to the features they can add I believe most people are going to be replacing their hubs every 3-4 years to get the latest and greatest. How many first generation Tivo's are still in use? Unless I see something drastically different in the next couple of nights I’m porting my number over. I have no need for the silly premier features though so if Ooma does fail, I’ll be one of the culprits. Followup comments:
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Installation took 15 minutes and it worked seamlessly from the onset with my Comcast connection. Then, we conducted the Litmus Test to verify this was really going to work. We called my mother-in-law in Florida who has in the past was critical about our prior phone set-up when we used Vonage and MJ. I called her and asked her if she could hear me clearly. She asked me why I was asking that, and I tried to explain to her what we had done. She stated that she could hear me clearer than when my wife calls her on her cell phone. Then my wife spoke with her for about 20 plus minutes again with zero issue. The test passed with flying colors! Obviously our experience is relatively new. I will post an update on this after a few months. But so far, this has been a great experience. Followup comments:
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Sept. 26th 2009 Still working flawless. Never have to think about. Best sound quality I've had with any phone service, POTS, CELL, or other VOIP. Could not be more satisfied with this service. Ended 5 years with Vonage at about $39.00 a month after fee's and taxes for another service. Tried MagicJack, which did not work as reliable full time home phone. Moved to Ooma as third VOIP service and by far the best. Followup comments:
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I'd been a Vonage customer for 5 years which was currently costing me $32.99 per month so the hub will pay for itself in 5-6 months. A good thing if Ooma continues doing business and the hub continues to work. Actual setup was easy and fast. System was up and running in about 20 minutes including unpacking, online hub activation and a brief glance at the Quick Start Guide. I placed the hub behind my router rather than in front, instructions are provided for various network setups and hardware configurations. I've only been using the service for one day but thus far call quality has been excellent. Pay once and never again.* Well maybe. If you want to access certain Ooma Premier functions on other phones you'll need to buy a Scout unit for each phone from which you wish to utilize those functions (A complete Ooma Core system comes with one Scout), the service comes with a 60 day subscription to what Ooma calls it's Premier service(Not required) which includes functions such as a user generated telemarketing black list, a second line and a couple of other features for $99 a year. If the hub dies out of warranty you'll have to buy a new hub at full price. I've read on BBR that Ooma may have to start charging their customers for taxes in the near future. My first and hopefully only call to CS was less than stellar. The CS rep had a thick accent which was hard to understand and the fact that he was in a room with what sounded like hundreds of other people talking and pounding on keyboards didn't help. In the 5 years I was with Vonage I never had a reason to call CS, hopefully Ooma will be the same. There's been a lot of discussion in the BBR VOIP forum regarding Ooma's business model and whether or not they will be to maintain their current pay once phone plan. Only time will tell. It's an interesting experiment for me and I'll be happy if I at least break even on the cost of the hub. If the company goes under or starts playing fast and loose with their terms I'd switch to Future9 which is who I would have gone with if not for a couple of obstacles unique to me personally. I'll update this review as time progresses. Followup comments:
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Let me just say this was the easiest piece of equipment to hook up anybody can hook this up. Right now I am very happy with what I have paid for, I want to do a lot of testing with faxing and the small issues you read about service. Not for nothing why is there only 16 reviews on this product. It should be a lot more maybe people dont know about it ,I mentioned it to people at work and they never heard of it. Once this catches on I think it going to be a great hit. Followup comments:
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ooma
undisclosed location
Contract price not specified. 
"great quality, easy to install"
"number porting"
"got a new number and cancelled landline"
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You may want to score Ooma on your review
about 1 days
Question about monthly cost?
). Support ticket opened (have ticket number).
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