Is anyone familiar with Ooma?

Post Reply New Topic

My wife and I are going to be moving and we need to reduce our expenses, so I just bought Ooma. We can get DSL for $35.00 per month where we are going, and the Ooma will give us free telephone service (including long distance) on the DSL line for a grand total of less than we are presently paying for phone and internet together. Other than the matter of having no phone if the DSL is down, does anyone know of any great problem with that kind of plan?

I'd not heard of Ooma: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooma

I use Skype: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype - who did have an "interesting" day of outage, a long while back, while they were growing. I just looked, and they are showing "16,111,075 People Online", at this moment. They are free.

I have heard of Skype, but I have never used it. Is there a way to connect a regular phone and have a local number? If so, maybe I should forget about the other.

I originally used it when I was still on a dial-up connection. Not perfect, but workable for voice. I can't recall if I've ever tried video over dial-up.

The parts of Skype that I regularly use are the free Skype to Skype voice and video connections (and conferencing), plus the text chat/conference stuff.

I also keep some credit for making calls to land lines, and so on. Generally, that is charged at effectively local call rate. I.e. I get 1p per minute to US, Japan, China, Europe, etc, (next door!).

I quite like the fact that my contacts list (and entire call/chat history) follows me around from machine to machine - and doesn't care if I'm connected from multiple machines.

I've just had a look through the "shop" on their web site, and they will sell you just about every combination of phone... from a USB (plug into your online computer) one, or WiFi, or videophone, or stand-alone, or plain 3G mobile Skypephone (they have a deal going with provider "3", here). I'm not sure what they market in the states for that sort of option.

Anyway... some people seem to hate Skype, on principle? I just use it.

PS. Yes... you can have a telephone number - but they charge for that. I don't use it. It is then free to receive calls. It charges the caller at local rate, if they are in the same country as you. The details are on their site.

I thank you, and I will take a look to be sure I have considered all possibilities!

I have heard one of the big VOIP companies had some kind of legal action going against them, but they were ultimately found to be transferring data, not actual voice! I can understand why certain phone companies do not like that, but their monopolies must end some day, eh?!