Anyone ever used this product? It has amazing reviews on Amazon (153 reviews... 142 rate it 5 stars, 11 rate it 4 stars).
I haven't looked into it too closely but it looks like it's maybe $3.50 a month after the up front costs (about $250). Reviews say the sound quality is very good and it's very reliable. Seems like a good cheap alternative to having home phone service.
http://www.amazon.ca/Ooma-100-0211-1...8289065&sr=1-1
Very interesting device with good reviews.
I used Vonage around 7 years ago but gave up because of all the times it caused me to miss a word the other person was saying or vice versa.
I know my high-speed internet now is much better than it used to be and it sounds like this device is a big step up from Vonage.
You have to like the ongoing $3.50 per month charge. It is on sale from Amazon right now for about $200. They also give a 60-day money back guarantee and you can keep your own number for $40. You can also connect with your mobile phone so that it rings when the home phone rings. You can also have a second number so if you have someone in the USA who you frequently phone you will only be charged for a local call. All calls in Canada are free. This is a good deal for me since 95% of my calls are within Canada and the few from the USA are predominantly from one location.
One Amazon reviewer complained that he could not phone Bell or certain 1-800 numbers for some reason (Fed-ex in particular).
They also sell some enhanced services for a slightly higher charge.
Right now I am spending $54 per month with Shaw cable phone. So over 3 years I am paying $1948. Whereas potential I would only pay $200 + $40 (maintain phone number) + $39 (3 years subscription) = $279. That is about a 85% savings. If I do not like it I can quit the service within 60 days.
I think I will order it and give it a try.
http://obihai.com/
Use this with freephoneline.ca and google voice and you have free calls to north america. Awesome device!
Cool. Let us know how it works out once you get it!Originally Posted by PMREdmonton
I've had my Ooma for a couple of weeks now.
Phone works great - can't tell the difference at all. There are no skips in the phone and voice quality has been very good. The installation is very easy and took about 10 minutes to do. The device basically plugs into your router and then you plug your phone into the device and voila - it is done.
There was a $40 fee to port over our current phone number. We could have taken a new one in our area code zone for free but wife wanted to keep our old number. Thus we had to wait about 3 weeks for the port to take place and had to keep our old phone line active until the port was complete. Again, this was our (my wife's) choice to do this.
You can check your voice mail from your ooma account on the internet very easily. You can get a second phone number for 9.99/month on Ooma premier which comes with other interesting features (calls forwarded to your mobile phone when you're not home, you can make a callers blacklist, can send phone calls straight to voicemail without ringing, free calls to US, enhanced call waiting so your other phones will ring while you are on the phone and receive another call, voice-to-text voicemail). You can use bluetooth. We are just basically using it as a landline so I can't talk much about those other features. One nice thing is that most of the features we were paying extra from our phone company are free now (long distance to Canada, voicemail, call display). The ongoing cost of the voice service is $3.50 per month. You can make long distance phone calls anywhere but there is a charge for different countries but it is still quite a bit less than what our phone company had been charging us.
You can buy an Ooma mobile app for your smartphone and make internet calls over Wifi for free to any Ooma phone. You can also use wifi to call anywhere in Canada or the US for 1.6 cents/minute.
There is the usual downside of 911 not being able to trace your address from these phones but I can't say that I am especially worried about losing that feature and one feature of the phone is a text message is sent to our mobile phone if anyone ever dials 911 from our Ooma phone.
Overall I"m very happy with this phone and it is much better than my previous experience with Vonage which I gave up on after a year and that one cost $39.99/month and wasn't nearly as good.
Many commenters online have said they like it as a personal phone but wouldn't use it as a sole business line for a myriad of reasons including internet downage would cause phone line to be inactive. However, there is a feature that would send calls to your mobile phone under such a circumstance.
I like it to myself but, of course YMMV.
We looked into this a while back as well. But since we were locked in with Rogers we decided to hold of. I only have a couple of months to go on that contract so I'll go with Ooma as well! Just out of curiosity -and this might be a stupid question I'm sorry - but does your computer need to be on all the time or is that not relevant?
No, it does not interact with the computer at all. It is connected up to your router or modem only.
Basically completed another month with Ooma.
Working great and phone bill was $3.50 this month.
Why are people paying $250 up front for VoIP?
I pay I think $1 US to maintain a Cnd number (can't remember the last time I topped it up) so I can do business with NAicans, and the half penny a minute or I think it's $5/month US unlimited. Works on smartphones (which do most of the quality - noise cancelling mic etc) and I get my voice mail via email anywhere (no need to check yet another website daily). The main factors to the quality of VoIP is your internet speed not being dial up and router being smart enough to give priority for VoIP/gaming etc.. This device can not magically make better quality than those 2 important parts (internet and router) You basically paid $250 for a standalone device but they already existed for years from Linksys for $50 (which you can plug normal phones in to) Vonage and all the rest are just taking advantage of how much cheaper VoIP is than landlines (you already paid for the bandwidth...)
When everyone thinks the same they don't think at all
Another ex-vonage user here. Well, still have an account on a retention plan (too many people still use that number) but I'm working on phasing it out. As described above, it often results in missed words or whole phrases as it cuts in and out. That's been my experience with Skype as well, and even MagicJack. I'm currently using Skype for long distance due to how well it integrates with my android phone, and haven't had a landline in 7 or 8 years. Thankfully work pays half of my cell phone costs :S
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