ooma Core VoIP Phone System with No Monthly Phone Service Bills

I had actually been looking at this for awhile. My husband and I are both in our 20's, and like many of our peers, we primarily use our cell phones for communication. So we held off on getting a home phone. Still, there were many times I wished we had one. I cannot hear my cell phone ringing throughout my house, so unless I carried it around everywhere with me, I would miss calls. I also don't get the best cell phone reception in my house, so I found myself sitting outside, or by open windows when I'd have to make a call. Pretty annoying. At the same time, I didn't want to pay for home phone service either. That's when I started looking into this.

After the initial purchase, that's all you ever have to pay. Unless you want special features like several phone lines. Even with the special features, it ends up being about $10 a month. However, I find that I don't need those extra services.

I have Comcast, with only one internet connection, and I was worried that I would need to buy a router so that I could have both the ooma and the computer hooked up. But I was wrong, it connects very easily with the ethernet going from the modem to the ooma, and then from the ooma to your computer. So you only need one hookup, unless you want to keep your main ooma hub in a different room from your computer. Actually, the ooma comes with all the cords and accessories you need, including a splitter if you have DSL. The only thing it doesn't come with is a phone that you need to hook up to it. You can use any kind of phone, you don't need a special one. Once the hub is hooked up, you can plug the scout into any phone jack in your house (doesn't have to be connected to the internet) and you now have two lines.

Installation was fairly easy. If the machine is hooked up wrong, it'll flash red. The only problem I had, is once I had it hooked up, it's supposed to glow blue, and it didn't. It simply stopped glowing all together. The phone would make the sound as though it were connected, but I couldn't make any calls, and I couldn't call the ooma from an outside line. After maybe 15 minutes, it started working even though I hadn't done anything, but it still doesn't glow blue. But whatever, it works.

Ooma appears to be a small company (at least right now), without much in the way of customer service. You have to wait a long time in order to talk to talk to one of the few people that works there. My husband is in the military, and as such we're prone to moving. I called customer service to ask if there's a fee involved in changing your phone number (so we could get a new local number if we moved). The man I spoke to sounded very frazzled and confused. He said, no, there's no fee to change the number, but you can't just change it whenever you feel like it, it needs to be for a 'real reason'. And maybe in the future they'd charge a fee, but he doesn't know for sure. He sounded as if he was making up policy on the spot. They concept of "maybe in the future they'd charge a fee" kind of worries me. What else might they charge for in the future??

I'm not usually an early adopter, but Ooma seemed like it was worth taking a chance on. Boy was it. It is extremely simple to install, I was up and running in about 10 minutes. Rather than list all the great things about it let me just say that every feature listed in their product description works exactly as described. The call quality is perfect, no one would ever know you're not on a traditional land line unless you told them. I'd recommend this product to anyone with a high speed internet connection.

Background: I've been using numerous VoIP products for several years. These include Vonage, Skype, Yahoo! Messenger with Voice, VoIP Discount, and more. I feel very familiar with today's VoIP offerings and have a thorough understanding of Ooma's product. My current broadband setup is through a Comcast Cable modem. For the sake of comparison, I will use Skype and Yahoo! Messenger.

Setup: Ooma is extremely easy to install. A tech-savvy customer probably doesn't even need the instructions to set up Ooma. For the uninitiated, the included instructions are very clear and all the ports are easily identifiable. I can't imagine many people that would have a hard time physically setting up Ooma and activating the service on the company's web site.

Features: In addition to unlimited domestic calling, Ooma offers great features like caller ID, call waiting, and voicemail. These all work as advertised. I particularly like the voicemail notification options. Ooma also has premium services; for my calling habits, they're unnecessary, but I understand why some people would find them useful.

Domestic Calling: For me, this is where Ooma really shines. The call quality is fantastic -- definitely as good or better than calls I made through Skype or Yahoo! Messenger. The calls are extremely clear and I never had any connection issues. Considering the current price of the system, Ooma will pay for itself in less than a year if you compare it to all-you-can-eat offerings from phone and cable companies.

International Calling: When it works, it's very good. In terms of call quality, Ooma sounded significantly better than Yahoo! Messenger and on par with Skype. The Ooma rates are very competitive. For the countries that I frequently call, the rates were better than Skype (sometimes half the cost) and on par with Yahoo!'s. Unlike those services, you don't need to have a PC on to dial internationally. This is a huge feature for my household, since I live with people that want to make international calls but are not PC savvy.

Now for the bad news -- the international service has been spotty. I've been using Ooma service for more than a year. At times it works perfectly for international calls. At other times, it's very difficult to connect. There have been extended periods (sometimes weeks) where I've had to redial a number numerous times in order to connect an international call. Ooma's customer service was not helpful at all in these cases, offering advice like "dial the number slowly" and "don't use speed dial". I understand that this service is evolving and changes are made to it, but the main reason I'm taking a star off of this review is due to the inconsistent international service. While it has worked flawlessly for the last few months, I'm not comfortable relying on it without Yahoo! And Skype as backups.

Conclusion: Overall, Ooma is a great product and a fantastic value at its current pricing. It has served me perfectly for domestic calls. For international calls, the service is great when it works and frustrating when it doesn't.

I don't know how they do it or why, but this is the best deal going. I have used Vonage and Lingo, and this pays for itself in less than a year. Call quality is just as good as or better than the other VOIP services, and NO PHONE BILL is a huge plus. Definitely worth the initial investment.

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.