Ooma is a VOIP company that went online in 2007 and I wrote about it a year ago but didn’t feel it was cost effective at the time.
Well, a few things have changed in a year. They’ve lowered their price from $400 to $249 (including a Scout worth $60 separately) and now are selling them on Amazon and Best Buy (in Los Angeles only).
Ooma Hub - Front
A little background check on Ooma shows they formed in 2005, is located in Palo Alto and had an initial funding of $26M. I’m hoping that’s enough money for them to stay in business for more than one year, which is how long it will take for me to break even, after switching from Vonage.
I visited my local Best Buy and picked up the black Ooma box and took it home. Regardless of anything else, these guys know how to make things look sexy to a gadget loving geek like me. Everything looked great, starting from the quick install book, to the design of the Hub, and even the packaging. Nice.
Unlike Vonage that gives you a black box that basically looks like a small cable modem, Ooma gives you what they call a Ooma Hub, which looks and works like an answering machine.
Ooma Hub - Back showing connections
The quick install instructions show how to connect Ooma with a cable modem, or DSL setup. The box even comes with the cables and adapters you need, depending on what type of setup you have. I followed the instructions for connecting my cable modem to the hub and activated my account online.
One thing to note here is, you must decide during activation if you want to move your existing phone number over to ooma. If you currently use a land-line, this decision must be made before you can complete your activation and will cost $40. If you are with another VOIP (like Vonage), you don’t have to decide until later, but it will still cost $40 either way.
The Scout is another smaller box that allows you to hookup another phone in a separate room. Although, in theory, you can do this with Vonage, Ooma gives you everything you need to make this work easily.
After everything was connected, I picked up my Panasonic cordless and got my ooma dial-tone. Nice.
Time to do some testing by calling some people. My initial reaction was that the voice quality was good, but not as good as Vonage. There was nothing specifically wrong, but I think there’s a slight difference in quality the same way that sometimes cell phone calls sound a little lower in quality during a call.
One small annoyance is when your call goes through, you hear the ooma “music” which can sometimes drown out the receiver’s voice. I read on the forum that you can ask for this to be turned off, but frankly, they should just get rid of this “feauture” because I doubt anybody wants it or likes it.
What I really liked is the way the hub works exactly like a regular answering machine. When a call comes in, the line 1 indicator lights up red, then you’ll hear the caller, then when they leave a message, the message light comes on. When you get home, you push the play button and listen to your messages. You push the “trash” button to delete the message. If you know anybody that doesn’t like voicemail because of the way that works, this will make them change their minds. No more pushing “1″ to play and “3″ to delete on your phone. Of course, you can listen to messages that way also.
My next test was to try to FAX something and this is where there was a failure. The FAX machine would try to connect to the recieving FAX and fail. When I did this same test with Vonage, it worked flawlessly.
After reading some forum posts, I decided to try changing the settings in the Hub. More specifically, to change the “Quality of Service” settings. To do that, you go to setup.ooma.com from your browser to access the ooma hub directly. Click on “Advanced” and you’ll see the screen below.
Next to “Upstream Internet Speed,” enter your speed. You can find out what your speed is from a website like speedtest.net. Click “Update” to save your new settings. After making this change, I tried the FAX again without success.
Once again, I went back to the ooma website and finally found the document describing how to send using a FAX machine. They said to use “*99″ before the number you are dialing. My HP printer/FAX also allows me to enter a “pause”, which I did. This did the trick and the FAX worked properly. Apparently, this code tells ooma to put the call in a “high quality” or digital mode. Whatever it does, it works.
So at this point, I got everything to work the same way that I had it on my Vonage service, except no monthly fees. Nice.
As with Vonage, you can go to the ooma website, which has a “lounge” where you can listen to your messages (instead of using the hub) and change your settings. As with Vonage, you can have an email sent, and/or a text message sent to your cell phone when a message is left on your phone. You can also set how many rings the caller gets before the voicemail picks up.
One thing that should be noted here is, when you activate your account, you are automatically signed up for their “Premier” service free for 60 days. This service normally costs $13 per month. One of the key features they give you is the ability to screen calls. This is feature is not available on Vonage at any cost. Like a regular answering machine, you can listen to the call, then pickup the phone if you want to take the call. I don’t want to pay per month so I’m not going to have this service available to me after the 60 days is over. Oh well.
A feature available on Vonage is the ability to see a list of all calls (incoming and outgoing) listed in your account online. Ooma currently does not have this feature. So if you need this feature for some type of accounting, you should go to Vonage.
One final nit pick. There was a minor bug with the ooma lounge and Firefox 3 in listening to your message, but this works fine with IE7. [NOTE: Between the time I wrote this after complaining about it on the ooma forum, and right now, this bug has already been fixed. Wow. That was fast.] This shows how new this service is and probably not being used by millions of people yet. They are still working out some kinks on the website. However, their forum and blogs shows they are very dedicated to customer service and this gives me hope that things will be okay in the future.
Ooma also has a referral system where if your friend also buys from a Best Buy in Los Angeles, you and your friend both get a $25 Best Buy gift card. Not bad. I’m sure this won’t be going forever so might as well take advantage of it before it expires.
All in all, so far, my ooma has worked properly and I’m happy with the service. Of course, the best part is no more monthly fees. You can’t beat the price. As long as they don’t go out of business in the next year, I’m golden. Every year after that, I’ll be saving about $250 per year.
I’m just waiting for Verizon or Time Warner Cable to call me to see if they can match the price. What a great phone call that will be.
Salesguy: How much are you paying for phone service?
Me: Nothing.
Salesguy: Excuse me?
Me: I don’t pay anything. It’s free. Are you going to beat that price?
Click. Followed by a dial-tone.
So after weeks of waiting, my port of the Vonage number to my ooma account finally went though. There was some type of problem verifying that I was who I said I was and I had to send them a FAX of my electricity bill, which is rediculous because with Vonage, I am able to use it anywhere I take their box.
This got me to thinking about other similar large market share losses. Speaking of Microsoft, they did the same thing to Digital Research. Digital Research had practically the entire market share of microcomputer operating systems with their CP/M. But Bill Gates came along and bought an OS from Seattle Computing and with some modifications, sold it to IBM for their brand new microcomputer.
Speaking of Yahoo and Google, what did people do before the Internet? Today, if I want to buy something, a couple of clicks of my mouse and I can buy anything under the sun online. Before the Internet, people used the Yellow Pages. Many people are too young to have even used the Yellow Pages. It’s a big book that has the phone numbers of every business near you. It also had some ads in it too. Sort of like what Google does now, but slower, builkier, and only locally.
During the early days of micro computers, people used Dot matrix printers. These were printers that used print heads that moved across the paper to print by using ink ribbons. Epson, a Japanese company, ruled this market. If you wanted a printer, you bought an Epson.
Well, I saved the best for last. During the 80’s, Sony had a product called the Walkman. It was a portable cassette player that would allow the user to play music on the go. You could listen to music while commuting, or jogging, or just hanging out. They sold tons of these things. It was a great idea. They owned the market that they had basically created from scratch.
