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: Great Alternative to the Telcos For the Budget Conscious Consumers
Summary: 4 Stars
Before I bought the Ooma Core/Scout System I was paying AT&T well over $70 a month for their so-called call advantage plan. Even when I downgraded to their basic local service without long distance I was still paying over $31 a month. Now, I rarely use my home phone since I am hardly home. Frustrated I went online to research about available VoIP Phone System and stumbled on Ooma. I read their Amazon product detail description with a few user reviews and ordered it.
Setup was a no-brainer; I followed the setup guide provided and activated the device online as directed. In fact I am one of the few guys who would look at product User Guide only when I am stumped but chose to follow the simple setup guide included with the product in this case. I connected the base to my AT&T 2Wire Wireless Gateway, then connected my Panasonic DECT 6.0 3-Handset Expandable Digital Cordless Phone with Answering System and ChoiceMail (KX-TG7433B)(Black) and started making calls right away.
Note that I was unable to activate the first unit sent to me by Amazon as Ooma activation System claimed the unit was already activated, perhaps a returned unit? No biggie: Amazon promptly sent me a replacement which I activated and installed without a hitch.
I do not have premier service at the moment as I do not have any need for it but think it has lots of great features especially the "Instant Second Line" if you have spouse or teenagers at home. And you really do not need the Scout to use the "Instant Second Line": if you have a DECT 6.0 Cordless phone, just press the talk button twice and you can place a second call while a spouse or teen is already 'jabbering' away on the other line. However, if you like to use the Second Line as a dedicated line then you need an activated and assigned Scout for it to work.
Be careful when entering the Mac address of the Hub or the Scout during the activation process as it is easy to confuse the letter "O" and the digit "0".
What kind of High Speed Internet Service do I use with my Ooma System? I have AT&T Direct (Dry Line) Basic plan which is 768 Kbps download and 384 Kbps upload and the voice quality has been great so far. Nevertheless, if you have family and or intend to use it for your home based business I will suggest AT&T "Elite Plan" or the "Pro plan" at minimum or better still use a Cable or FIOS service.
It has been over a year and three weeks now and I have not had any serious issue with my Ooma System. I get occational echo, static or dropped calls but nothing major considering that I pay zero monthly bills for this phone service after my initial $202.58 equipment purchase. When I first activated my Ooma Hub I noticed that my outgoing caller ID was showing "Ooma Inc". I emailed OOma customer service but did not receive any response. I then called the customer support line and was put on hold for about 20 minutes (no biggie here too) before I reached live person who conducted a few tests and opened a support ticket. Subsequently the issue was fixed and I have not had any reason to call customer support ever since.
Now Ooma has a new version of this unit called "Ooma Telo" ooma Telo Free Home Phone Service which may be used with an optional proprietary Dect 6.0 Handset ooma Telo DECT 6.0 Cordless Handset (100-0200-200). Even though the Telo has received good reviews I will stick with my Ooma Hub Core System until it breaks. As other reviewers have pointed out the Telo buyers will pay an FCC mandated $11.75 annual tax after their first year of service. This fee is nothing compared to the dubious fees padded into regular Telco monthly phone bills. The new Hub buyers may pay this new nominal annual FCC tax too. Again this fee is not a big deal as far as I am concerned.
Overall my experience with Ooma Hub has been great and I will recommend it to any person or family looking to cut expenses while staying in touch. I believe that most setups headaches would be avoided or greatly reduced if people would follow the included setup guide.
Customer Review: All is well with my new ooma Hub
Summary: 5 Stars
After studying the reviews about ooma products here on Amazon, I decided to purchase the Hub/scout "Core" in mid-October 2010 for use with my existing Comcast high speed internet service. ( I went with the Core so that i would not have any monthly taxes to pay ).
Once the Hub arrived it was working so well that I signed up to have my landline telephone# ported. As soon as the porting was completed - it took 3 weeks, and went smoothly - I dropped my landline. By that time I was more than ready to save the $62/mo. which I had been paying for a landline with caller id. (I must say that after 40 years, dropping my landline was both irrationally scary and exhilarating. ) For most of the past month ooma has been my only home telephone service, and I have been fully satisfied with it... as another reviewer wrote, I only wish that I had done it sooner.
I came to be an ooma purchaser in a rather round about way. For years I have wanted an iPhone, and during my most recent recurrence of that fixation I noticed an article in the tech section of the New York Times which discussed a wireless calling supplement to iPhone's cellular plan. Several readers had shared their experiences and opinions at the end of the article, and some of them mentioned that they had ooma as their non-cellular home phone service. One thing led to another, and after I finished researching ooma, and several other options, I took a good hard look at the list of things I needed to do with my income this year, and I decided that I would feel better having no monthly telephone bill, instead of a larger one...at least for the next year (or, at least until it became clear what Apple and Verizon will do). And the rest is history.
This week, I moved even further down the path. I decided to purchase ooma's Premiere features for the next year. I realized that I now have a vested interest in the future success and development of ooma as a company, and that it is in my own best interest to do my small part to support continued improvement of their product. I also realized that I had begun to appreciate certain capabilities of the Premiere add-ons (the ability to have the system be silent while at the same time taking messages for me at night when I want quiet time, for example), and I felt that the extra features were worth the money it would cost to have them on a long term basis.
Concurrently, I decided to purchase a iPod Touch for myself - it should arrive from Amazon tomorrow - so that I can have my ooma calls linked to the 'Touch through the wifi system which already exists throughout my home and property. In this way I will finally get to see what all those apps are about, and I will have enhanced communication capabilities in my home zone. I necessarily spend a lot of work time outdoors on my property, beyond the range of my cordless telephone, and although I don't spend much time on the phone, there are a few calls which I would prefer to receive when they come in. Ooma Mobile should have that capability, receiving wifi calls, sometime this year, according to their website (ooma Mobile involves a small one time charge for the app, but you must have Premier to make it work on the 'Touch/iPad/iPhone).
And so, I happily share my good experience with you, remembering that just over a month ago I had turned to this forum for unbiased (real user) information about ooma. If anything changes for me over the next few months, I will be sure to report back.
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p.s. For you Tivo users, please know that I was able to hook up my Tivo2 box to the ooma Hub and have it dial out for programming. It took some research, and some tweaking, but it is doable.
And, for those of you who are curious, I found that my Panasonic answering machine and Dect 6 cordless phones work flawlessly with my Hub. It was a nice surprise to be able to just plug in and use a familiar system ( plug 'n play). My particular Panasonic model speaks out caller information, and for the moment I am continuing to use it, and not the ooma box, as my everyday answering device. Because of this I must shut off the Panasonic and let the ooma Premiere silence setting take over at night when I do not want to hear any ringing or caller id voices as a call comes in.
Customer Review: Wish I'd bought this sooner
Summary: 5 Stars
I've had this now for about 3 months. I'm VERY pleased and wish I'd gotten it a year or two ago so I could have started saving sooner. I shopped and researched quite a bit before deciding this would meet my needs. All 4 of us in the household have cell phones, but none have great reception at home, and mine (provided by work) is the worst - almost unuseable. So I needed something else, but hated paying so much for a landline. I also needed something my wife could use to call her family in Europe. And wanted something that would work when telecommuting. Ooma works great for almost everything. Read on for details.
Even though I could get free service, I opted for the Premier service at 120 a year. Having the second line works great when working from home, both for leaving a line free for the family, and for creating quick 3-way conference calls between both lines. And I set my mobile to forward all calls to my home line, and people at work then have a reliable way to reach me, and I don't have to run all over the house trying to find a spot with decent reception.
I also LOVE the blacklisting feature, which has just about eliminated telemarketing calls. And I really like the call screening ability, and the caller ID features.
Voice quality on domestic calls has been excellent. The only disappointment has been voice quality on international calls. I knew from research this could be iffy, so I was prepared. I did quite a few calls to hotels in various places to check the quality and found it to be passable to very good, but spotty (no worse than many local calls on my mobile). But my wife's elderly mother in Europe had some troubles with the calls (possibly due to her own phone), so we tried a calling card bought from the web and that solved the problem. It's more expensive than the Ooma international package would be, but at only about 7-8 bucks a month for all the calls to mom-in-law, it's not an issue. All told, my monthly bill has gone from about 70 to less than 20 (including the Premier service). So I'll be paying off the up front hardware investment after about 5 months. Won't be long now!
Installation was simple and quick, and didn't even require a credit card. Wow, that's how all free services should be. I used the free mode for a couple of weeks to be sure of the service, then made the upgrade to Premier. Porting my number from Verizon took about 3 weeks, and happened exactly as promised. Communications from Ooma throughout the process were prompt and clear. As some others have done, while waiting for porting, I physically disconnected the landline coming into my house, and set my Verizon account to forward all incoming calls to my temporary Ooma number. So there was no disruption for people calling me, and no conflicts between the landline and Ooma during the transition period.
Initially, I played with configuration quite a bit and ended up with what's probably an unusual setup, but it works great. First, as mentioned above, I disconnected the landline coming into my house at the network interconnect box. Then, I placed the Ooma Hub AND Scout on my home office desk. The line from the Ooma Hub "Wall" socket goes directly to the Scout, and I plug my desk phone into the Scout. Then, the line from the Ooma Hub "Phone" socket actually plugs into the regular phone jack in the wall. That allows all the regular jacks and phones throughout my house to work just like they did before, both wired and wireless. I set it up so that both lines are in shared configuration on the Ooma, so whenever I have an incoming call, all the phones ring, and we can answer any one. Then if another call comes while one is in progress, only the other line rings. And I've given distinct rings to the two lines, and only use the second number when forwarding calls from my mobile, which is almost exclusively work related. So I and the family know when it's calls coming from my work. It may sound complicated, but the bottom line is ultimate flexibility and function. I LOVE it.
One last aspect. I use comcast high speed internet, getting about 20M down, and 4M up. I placed the Ooma hub downstream from my router, and set my router to give that port priority. So far, so good.
Customer Review: Ooma works better than I expected
Summary: 5 Stars
First off, I am not someone who received an Ooma device for free through any kind of promotion. I paid for my Ooma and ordered it here on Amazon. I debated long and hard over whether or not to order an Ooma. I've read all the blogs online about how Ooma is supposed to fail as a business, etc. I decided to take a calculated risk and go with the company. Honestly, I'm glad I did. I hope they can stick around for a while. They seem like a good company. I think they are on the right track presently.
Let me outline my experience thus far with Ooma. I have been a VoIP subscriber for about 4 years now through another provider. While I've generally been pleased, the voice quality of my previous provider was starting to go downhill. I've read so many positive reviews from Ooma users, that I decided to give it a try. I've also tried skype over the phone, but find they often bill mysterious small amounts to my credit card and I don't like that they don't offer number porting or E911, both of which Ooma offers (to be fair, Skype is not in the home phone business).
The Ooma device is very well designed. It feels like purchasing something from Apple. It's clear there are some Apple fans at the Ooma headquarters. Even the packaging is very nice. Opening the Ooma packaging and finding well-written documentation that is easy to follow and has clear, concise illustrations is quite nice.
Hooking Ooma up was extremely easy. From the time I opened the box to the time I had a ringtone was about 15 minutes, and I was taking my time. The sign-up process was really simple and well thought-out. They provide you with forums, email addresses and a phone number to contact if you have any problems. I was just really impressed with the amount of polish they had put into the product. You even get an immediate message in your voicemail box welcoming you to the service.
I've noticed that voice quality is better than my old VoIP provider. With my old provider, you would constantly cut each other off when talking, almost as if two people couldn't talk at the same time. It has to do with the echo cancellation software, etc. I noticed however, with Ooma I can talk at the same time as the other person, without cutting each other off and causing the audio to get all choppy. It honestly sounds like a landline in this regard.
The audio quality isn't without occasional issues. There are time when I hear echo, but it usually resolves itself within a 15 seconds or so. There have also been a few phone calls where people have complained about my voice breaking up some, but to be fair this was while my kids were watching a streaming movie on Netflix over the Internet. Audio so far seems to be very good almost all of the time, with a few instances when it is a bit flakey. But usually, if you make a phone call immediately after the bad connection, the next one is great. I think it is probably more an issue with my ISP than it is with Ooma.
There have been lots of concerns over privacy with Ooma, since it can direct your phone calls through other people's phone lines. Ooma has done what they can to prevent wiretapping, etc. but for some people still worry about what the Ooma peer-to-peer based network means for privacy. After doing some research I discovered that if you pay for the Premium Ooma service, which is $99 per year, they will not direct your calls through other people's Ooma devices, and will not direct any other people's calls through your Ooma device. They will use more traditional termination methods, like what other VoIP providers use. So, this alleviates the privacy concerns for the most part.
Even after paying for the Premium service, I come out paying $30 per month for the first year of service, which is a few dollars less than I was paying before. The second year of using Ooma, I will only pay $99 to keep the premium service, or if I choose to, I can get free phone service without the premium offerings. It's a great savings for a service that actually outperforms what I was paying more for.
Ooma customer support has also been very friendly and responsive.
So to sum up, Ooma has designed a great device that works well and saves you money. I've really been pleased so far.
Customer Review: Ooma is Fantastic
Summary: 5 Stars
Setting ooma up was a breeze. I had my ooma operating within 20 minutes of opening the box.
To help people understand how it works, I will explain how it is setup in my house.
The Internet comes into the cable modem. The computer network cable goes from the cable modem to the back of the ooma hub. Another network cable goes from the ooma hub to the router (nothing else changed regarding our home computer network - and I haven't noticed any performance change with the Internet.)
There is a standard phone wire that goes from the ooma hub to a regular old phone jack on the wall behind the computer - this is the wire that sends the ooma phone signal from the ooma hub to the rest of the phone jacks in the house.
I have a telephone plugged into the "phone" jack on the ooma hub. The cable modem, ooma hub and this phone are all in the basement.
I have an ooma scout plugged into a phone jack in the kitchen. The kitchen phone then plugs into this ooma scout. This phone has a cordless phone too. It is working just fine with ooma.
I have another ooma scout plugged into a phone jack in an upstairs bedroom. There is a phone plugged into that scout.
In the garage there is another ooma scout plugged into a phone jack. There is a phone plugged into that ooma scout too.
The sound quality on all of the phones is just fine and rivals our old land-line connection. The sound quality is much better than your average cell phone connection.
The kitchen and garage phones are both on wall mounted phone jacks. This works just fine if you use short phone cords (from the jack to the ooma scout and from the ooma scout to the phone) and have a place to hide the power cord. I used a little sticky tack to hold the scout against the wall under the phone. Velcro would be another wall-mount option.
I was paying about $30 a month for basic phone service from my local phone company. That price did not include any additional features, caller ID or long distance. It was just basic phone service.
After buying the ooma equipment, I paid $100 for a YEAR of their premier service (I think their current price is $10 a month for premiere - which you don't need to buy, but is nice.) So, I'm saving about $400 a year for a system that has WAY better features and INCLUDES long distance.
Some features/benefits of ooma:
-It includes voice mail.
-You can listen to voice mail from the ooma hub or anywhere you have an ooma scout! (Premiere feature)
-You can listen to your voice mail messages by logging in to ooma's web site.
-You can even set your account to e-mail your voice mail messages to you (as an audio attachment.) (Premiere feature)
-I now have Caller ID.
-You can BLOCK numbers that you do not want to receive calls from. (Premiere feature)
-There is even a feature that you can turn on that will block calls from numbers that have been blocked by many ooma users.(Premiere feature)
-An incoming and outgoing call log is kept for viewing on the ooma web site.
-If you are talking on one extension and receive an incoming call, ooma will automatically route the incoming call to your other extensions on a virtual second line. (Premiere feature)
You don't have to purchase the premiere service. You can buy the ooma equipment and not pay anything else for home phone service.
Porting my old land line phone number to my ooma account took about 18 days. Ooma stayed in contact with me via e-mail during the porting process.
Also, I did call ooma a few times with questions - one before I purchased the system and two times after I installed it to ask about porting. I only waited on hold a few minutes each time and each of the representatives were fluent in English and answered my questions correctly. I have been very pleased with the customer service.
I can't believe how simple the whole process was. The ooma system works very well and is packed with features that also work very well. This is a purchase that I am very glad that I made.