Yes. Not through wifi though.
I had mine up and working in 15 minutes and it has been unfailing since then. This sounds like operator error. You are supposed to cancel your “landline” (AT&T or such) and use Ooma. It works fantastically and saves me a bundle even with the Premier service.
Help me understand how this works. I see that you plug your current phone line into the Ooma machine. I know the idea of most folks is to eliminate your existing phone bill but is that required? That is, do you have to give up your current phone service for the Ooma service to work? Or can they both work at the same time over the same lines? My wife is hesitant to give up our local landline but would give up the long distance portion of it. So could I continue my local phone service and use Ooma over the same phone lines?
Very true. Guess I have a rare 100% free model. Time to start fazing out my Ooma number (which is VERY easy to remember…hand picked years ago) and migrating to the Obi device for my GV number.
Perhaps sell the Ooma w/NO fees ever on feeBay.
Plan, made. Thx!
Cheap is a cheap does. They didn’t make a new version just to charge you taxes: it is much better than your old box. (Besides, even if you could find the old box, you’d still have to pay the taxes. The good deal you got is all over.)
Yes . I cancelled att voice for 35/ month and upgraded to the faster 12mbps and still pay less since I only pay 10- ok 13.41/ month for ooma premeir. Loads of features and great value. I sound like I work for ooma. I should get some free oomas… I just bought 3 more tonight…
The Catch-22 is that you need an ISP to have Internet access. And unless you can “steal” a WiFi signal from your neighbors or have public WiFi, you’ll still need AT&T (and their DSL service) or some other provider. That means having to keep your landline unless you have cable. Some phone companies have a special cheaper service where they’ll only provide DSL and no voice (just like cable companies have a deal where you only get Internet but no TV).
If you only surf the web causally don’t require seamlessly streaming videos, you can easily get by with the cheapest DSL services. Verizon, for example, sometimes offer a $9.95-$14.95/month deal for low speed DSL. That’s more than enough for Ooma or any other VoIP service.
Yes,you can have Ooma hooked up to your existing phone system but it is a waste of money. Why does your wife love AT&T (or whomever) so much that she wants to give them money every month for no better service than Ooma gives? Have her look at their site and also the recent edition of Consumer Reports that rated Ooma #1. This isn’t an off-brand system.
Is anyone using this with FIOS? If yes, when you cancel/canceled your land line did/will Verizon raise your monthly Internet rate? Or do you lose a discount because you remove the phone part of the service from the FIOS package?
Thanks for any info you can provide, woot peeps!
Ooma’s instructions for distributing your Ooma’s service throughout your house on your phone lines.
A tricky part is to connect a phone wire from the jack on the back of the Ooma labeled ‘Phone’ to the wall–NOT the jack labeled ‘wall.’ Also, be careful to route the Ooma line onto an unused phone line in the house–plugging your Ooma into an active phone line can damage the Ooma.
We bought our Ooma a little less than 2 years ago. It’s the older hub/scout set, no taxes or fees. I opted for premier since I liked the extras and had been paying much more for less. That was $99/year. I bought in for an extra year at that rate up front. So I’ve got 2 lines, great voice mail, .mp3’s of my VM’s to my email, unlimited US calling, cheap international calling… it goes on and on, for $200 for 2 years service. When I bought, it was more of a gamble that Ooma might not survive.
They did survive, and I still love my Ooma service. It has been down 2 times in 22 months. Once for a few minutes, and once for half a day. All voice mails were caught and eventually showed up on my box, but the phone was out.
If you have a mobile phone, but don’t want to give up your land line, Ooma is the way to go.
If you want to keep using your existing answering machine rather than “voice mail”, as I do, the older (“core”) Ooma box does not allow incoming Touch-Tones through.
This isn’t for you. Go back to your TV now.
Both can co-exist peacefully. In fact, many people only use Ooma for long distance calls. And others consider their regular landline to be an emergency backup (since a landline jack is self-powered it will likely still work when your neighborhood has a power outage). That’s what we do. We have an old fashion self-powered $5.95 phone attached to the landline jack just for emergencies.
You can either keep the landline and Ooma totally separate, or integrate them. They are inherently separate because your landline comes out of the wall while this OOma is attached to your Internet router. Of course, if you use DSL from the phone company, they’re somewhat physically connected since both your Internet and voice come from the same wall jack. But they’re still electronically separate.
If you want to integrate the landline and your Ooma, you can get a two-line phone. That way, you can have three-way calling with different people on the two lines. Or use Ooma’s way of integrating the lines. The Ooma has a jack to plug in your landline. See Woot photo at below link (it’s too large to embed).
wow
You can use the Ooma service as a ‘line 2’ together with your existing landline service on ‘line 1’ if you have 4 wire phone jacks. Your old land line is on the two center pins for the jack, and the Ooma service is distributed on the outer two pins in the same jack. Ooma and a landline can NOT operate on the same 2-wire single line jack–it will damage the Ooma Telo. You’ve got to do a little phone jack monkeying around to get it to work, but it does. Ooma’s instructions
Ooma was a great solution for my parents. They live 6 months a year in the US and 6 months in Germany. Before Ooma they had to pay to keep a phone in the US active when they were not here (or cancel the phone service and get a new phone number every year when they come back). Now they have an Ooma box and they carry their Ooma box to Germany and have their local Texas number ring in Germany! Works without a hitch. Note: some countries block VoIP (like Ooma, Vonage, etc.).
Yes, but there are two issues to consider:
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Some places may block certain services (aka addresses) because too many users to that service can drag down their entire bandwidth. This may be true of hotels and dorms. As an example, many colleges blocked access to the filesharing service Napster because too much of the university’s bandwidth was being used for it. And no, at the time, it wasn’t blocked for legal copyright reasons. If using the Ooma is crucial, check to make sure that the place as no restrictions.
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You can’t hook up the Ooma through WiFi so you’ll need a physical jack. That means not being able to use Ooma in parks, picnic areas, camp grounds, etc. Furthermore, you’ll need an electrical outlet so make sure you have a converter if traveling outside the US.
For travelers, MagicJack may be a better option since that plugs into your computer. That means that you can use it through WiFi. And it’s powered through your computer’s USB jack so no external power is needed. Plus it’s a lot smaller.
I’m thinking this deal is a no-brainer. After I get approval from my wife in the morning, I think I’m going to be joining the ranks of the Ooma.
Thanks for the good comments and reviews everyone.