Ooma

How would you like to pay $12 a year for your home phone service, including long distance? You’re thinking, “Yeah right I’ve heard that before. I’ll have to use my computer as my phone. Right?” Nope, you don’t. “Then I have to plug my phone into my computer, install software, and pray it all works.” Wrong again. So, what is it? It’s called Ooma. “Did you just cuss at me in Portuguese?” No, I have no idea what Ooma stands for. Ooma is a VOIP phone (Voice over IP). In other words, it uses your internet connection to make calls. “See, you lied to me! I told you I had to use a computer in some way.” Now calm down, don’t let the blinking lights and electronics scare you. If you already have an internet connection, then this is easy to do.

Let me backtrack. I’ve been looking at a way to politely tell Qwest to go away. It’s been coming for a long time. I have the most basic phone service imaginable. Caller ID is the only thing I have. No voice mail, no call waiting, no long distance. On top of that, I had to pay extra for them to do nothing! That is, not to print my name in their phonebook. With modern times and technology, in my opinion, they charge way too much.

It’s taken me a while to switch because I haven’t been impressed with the competition. Vonage’s price wasn’t low enough for me to make the switch. Magic Jack is cheap, but I have to plug it into my computer. And from those who do have it, it doesn’t seem very reliable. It probably isn’t Magic Jack’s fault, but it does rely on the stability of your computer. Your kids could get on and mess it up; it may get stuck on a patch; someone may accidentally turn it off. You see the problems.

Ooma is different enough to get me to switch. The only possible drawback is the $249 price to buy the equipment. Best Buy had it on sale for $199 at the time I wrote this article. There are two Ooma devices to choose from: the Hub and the Telo. The Telo is the newer of the two, but also the least proven. I went with the new one because of the future updates, such a Google voice integration. The hub will probably go away soon, and there probably won’t be any future updates for it. If you’re into product packaging, the box was nice looking and had a high quality feel. There aren’t a lot of components, basically the device itself, a power cord, phone cord, and Ethernet cord to plug into your internet connection. The instructions are easy to understand; they use diagrams and large print. The set up was easy, basically register your device online, plug everything in as per the instructions, and off you go.

They’ve put a lot of thought into making it easy. All the phone updates and new features happen automatically. No downloading new firmware or software and installing it; it does it all on its own. No messing with Ip addresses to manage the device. You simply sign onto your My Ooma web account to manage it. You don’t even have to do that if you don’t feel like it. However, in there it gives you options, like changing how many times it rings before the answering machine picks up, and the ability to add a phone number to forward calls to if the device goes off line, such as an internet outage or power failure. You can always buy a UPS battery power supply to keep the device up in case of power failure. There are some advanced features you get if you sign up for a premier account, which will cost you $9.99 a month, or $119.99 a year. You get a choice between a free handset or free call porting of your old phone number, both are roughly a $50 value. With the premier service, you get call forwarding and a second phone line, so your spouse or teenager can’t tie up the phone, unless of course they both use it at the same time. There are even black lists. Ooma will block telemarketers for you; they call it a community black list. There is a separate, personal black list you can individually add numbers to. Both lists allow you to choose one of four options: Send to voice mail, Call blocked message, Number disconnected message, or continuous ring--they hear nothing but ringing, you simply hear nothing. The last free feature of note is HD voice when calling to another Ooma device. Not sure what that really buys in practicality, I mean it’s not like your voice is going to magically get more seductive, or change from monotone to stereo.