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 is great, but...
Summary: 4 Stars
I got influenced after reading so many positive comments on the product at Amazon and elsewhere. I am myself a tech savvy person and have been working in telecommunications R&D for last 13 years, so all the concepts of Voip, QoS and data/voice comms are no strange to me (eventhough I cannot consider myself an expert).
Anyway, I bought this Ooma from Amazon last month, mostly due to my getting more-expensive phone bills on long distance and international calls (my wife makes unbelieveable number of minutes of international calls to her relatives). I really like Skype voice quality, but don't like to turn on my computer everytime to make calls (not to consider it's less mobile). Buying Skype phone doesn't really solve my phone bill problems. Same thing with Yahoo Voice and even worse with MagicJack.
A friend of mine referred me to this Ooma product. After some days of heavy Internet searches on forums and reading pros/cons against the product, I said why don't I try it myself? First thing I checked was the international charge. I was suprised to see it is almost as competitive as Skype.
This made my decision to order it from Amazon (didn't realize it is also available at Costco!). After the shipment came, I read the instructions (really good) and installed it in about 30 minutes. It worked well. I use Ooma scout to connect my cordless phone which is located quite far from the hub. I still have another phone connected to landline (thru DSL filter), and that one is still working fine (directly to landline provider's network).
Currently, my new network setup is even more complicated than I originally put, after I switched my DSL+Cable to AT&T U-Verse (6 Mbps downstream/1 Mbps downstream). I use landline with Ooma hub to take advantage of internet-outtage. But the phonejack is far from the U-Verse gateway, so I used a tweaked Linksys wireless router (running non-standard firmware) to be a wireless bridge (client bridged). The Ooma hub is connected to this bridge.
To add more complication, I have 2 desktops + 1 laptop connected to a Netgear 1 Gbps switch. This Netgear switch is connected to a powerline bridge to be able to link to 2Wire gateway through powergrid. So I utilize all the medium: wires (phone, power) and ether (wireless) in my home! Amazingly Voice quality is still good, eventhough when I was running broadband speed test ([...]). Very little (if noticeable) bandwidth hogging.
With all the goodies of Ooma, I still have some issues, though. I am still subscribed to its 60-days Premier promotion, but some features don't work as expected (multiple ring to cellphone, calling to second-phone line goes strictly to voice mail, eventhough I did make sure the settings not to do that) etc. Another thing is the hub is quite hot, so don't leave it in hot area (I still need to measure how much power it draws, cause many people forget to count electricity bill for this use). Another thing is if we cancel Caller ID from landline provider, we won't get
But basic features (making and receiving calls, ofcourse) work perfectly.
I sometimes post technical observations about Ooma on my blogger ([...])
Updates (10/3/2010):
I posted an example ho to calculate the saving by using Ooma here: [...]
Customer Review: Wow, A great VOIP
Summary: 5 Stars
After trying two different VOIP companies, we were afraid to waste the money on another. We first had *ingo (starts with an L) which was awful. Poor call quality, an adapter that had to be reset every day, dropped calls and awful customer serivce. We then moved on to Sunrocket which was great, except they went out of business 3 months after we paid for a year in advance. We looked at Vonage but the reviews made us pause. We called them 2 times and both times we experienced VERY pushy sales people who made us realize they weren't the company for us. We had COX for our home phone service which is a VOIP (In case you didn't know) but their prices do not reflect a VOIP service.
Last week we decided to take the plunge with OOMA after looking at the reviews and the price. We will break even in under a year so it wasn't a hard choice for us. All we can say is WOW!!!! Even the packaging was impressive. Everything was neat and honestly looked very nice and professional and organized. I haven't purcahsed anything in a long time that just looked nice in the package and made me stop just to admire what a good job they did. Setup was easy and would have been done under 15 minutes but we didn't have a phone jack near our cable modem so we had to wait until we got a 50 foot cord. Once that was done, HOLY COW, A service that works as advertised! The quality is beyond great. We love the premier features and the scout is cool. We were going to wait a while before deciding on the premier services but after only one day, we were so impressed that we had to have it. Now we can have 2 calls going on at the same time. We can't say enough good things about OOMA.
For those online gamers, we play online games and haven't had any network degragation (lag) in the games because of the OOMA.
If you are like us and have been on the fence for VOIP and have high speed internet, this is the service for you. (DSL owners may have a different experience since that service is typically slower). This is a awesome product and is worth every penny. We have tested the service with multiple phone calls lasting at least an hour long and haven't had ANY issues. People on the other end say it sounds like normal phone service. We haven't had any dropped calls, laggy sounds, weird sounds or any of the problems that go with a poor VOIP.
You can read about all the services on the website, but one that is undermarketed is the blacklist feature. Finally, those annoying telemarketer calls will be a thing of the past. We haven't found a feature that wasn't useful. It finally feels like a company is on our side and giving us the choice and tools to block those unwanted calls instead of allowing every telemarketer to contact us and tell us we need to refinance, buy or invest in their products. (Even after being on the Do not call list for years, and yes, we renewed our names on the website)
Again, this is a great product and represents the GOLD standard of what VOIP services should aim to be. If you want a VOIP that works, don't waste your money on onage (starts with a V) or those other nickle and dime VOIPs. Just pony up the $200 and see how much better free service can be.
Customer Review: Initial Thoughts
Summary: 5 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
You can see the hype in the product description, you can see why ooma is a good idea money-wise, and so many people have written long reviews about the service. For me it came down to, why take the leap with this service? It sounds too good to be true, there has to be a hitch somewhere. So far I haven't found one.
Hardware is excellent, very well built. These units look almost Bang and Olefson in their simplicity and elegance. They look darn nice. The packaging is even kind of cool, a bit Apple-esque.
Instructions. I'm an instruction reader. I spent about 10 minutes reading both books. That is seriously not necessary at all. The Quick Start Guide, that's all you really need.
Activation - you will have to activate the unit before you install. There's a decision point that is not obvious, and it has to do with your current phone number. Ultimately I chose, port my old phone number. That's probably the safest cheapest way to go. After you activate ooma on the the website, and do the install, everything will work just fine. I'm going to try this service for a month or so, and then call ooma to actually shut off my landline (I could also never call them to shut off my landline service). Ooma will work perfectly in that mode. When you dial out, local calls are routed through your landline automatically; and long distance is routed through ooma. Easy as pie, simple and intuitive. Incoming calls, don't really care; people still call my same old phone number. If this service is really that great, I'll pay the $39.99 to have my landline shut down (it takes 3-4 weeks to complete the shut down).
Set up - it's not 10 or 15 minutes as a lot of people have written. That's almost impossible to install one that quickly. The tricky part, you need to be next to your DSL or Cable Modem, your router (if you have one), a phone line, and an electrical outlet. DSL installs will probably be easier than cable modem installs. But, you'll end up doing some rerouting of wires to do this install. I had to think pretty carefully about where things were going. The install right now is very ugly, but won't be too hard to dress up nicely.
So first impressions, this is a darn nice device. The forums and reviews debating this system all seem a bit old and wrong right now. The device appears to work exactly as advertised, no hidden costs, no surprises.
Let's all hope their business model is sound and they stay around for a long time.
Update - After 2.5 weeks of use, this device is incredible. The call quality is better than anything we ever had from ATT / landline. I too have noticed a tiny amount of low level background hiss once in a while, nothing objectionable at all. I've been on receiving and sending end of calls and quality is very clear. Use is absolutely intuitive, easy to understand. I'm about ready to port my number now.
Customer Review: No monthly charges, free long-distance, but no long faxes.
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this to replace my home phone service with ATT, which was costing a bundle. I like Ooma because it doesn't cost anything to call out of state. There's only one problem though; it tends to have issues with long faxes (sending or receiving). Whenever I try to do a long fax, it will only fax the first pages then lose the connection. It seems to work okay with low-res text faxes for about 5, perhaps 10 pages, but when you try to fax something that has lots of data, like pages covered in photos, it drops connection after about 2 pages worth.
Ooma support isn't very helpful... I sent them a message about connecting the Ooma hub to my home wiring, and got an extremely general, non-useful message in return, that didn't answer my questions, but seemed to avoid them.
Over all though, it has been very reliable for me after initial setup. I haven't had any more problems.
Things to know:
1. Ooma says their service doesn't work with satellite receivers; it works okay with both of mine.
2. If connecting to home wiring (phone port on ooma directly to wall phone-jack), it's best to disconnect line #1 from inside your phone wiring box. The phone line coming in from the phone company provides a DC current, which from what I've read, is still active even after your phone service is shut off (Might fry ooma).
If you're on a DSL line (like I am), connect the line from the phone company to your home wiring line #2 in the box. Get a splitter that has line #1 on one side, line #2 on the other. Connect line #2 to your DSL box in your home, line #1 to Ooma, then connect the splitter to your phone jack. Then when you connect phones around the house, you connect directly to the ooma box (through line #1), without needing filters to filter DSL traffic out (since DSL is on line #2).
When connecting DSL traffic through line 2, note that phone-lines are often hooked up in daisy-chains and only the necessary lines are connected. I was hooking up a phone-jack on the opposite side of the house from the phone-box, and I had to go through EVERY SINGLE PHONE-JACK and connect line #2 in each one. Every phone-jack was split off another one.
3. FAXERS BEWARE! Can't fax very much on Ooma.
4. When porting a number, you have to send a bunch of papers, signed and delivered, to Ooma. I faxed mine. It takes about a month for the porting to be completed. It was sort of sudden for me; I just came home to a non-working phone one day, and had to call ATT to set up a non-phone line DSL service (which can take 2-7 days to get), then I had to connect everything for Ooma.
5. It's best to set up Ooma so that your online traffic goes through the Ooma hub; otherwise, Ooma can be choked of bandwidth. Also, be sure to set up the Ooma QoS settings, and remember to do your port-forwarding if necessary. (modem to ooma to router/computer)
Over all, I'm saving lots-o-cash, and I learned a lot about my home-wiring. Not only that, but I can now tell everyone that I manage four subnets in my house =D
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!