ooma Hub - VoIP Phone Device with No Monthly Phone Service Bills

List Price: $599.00 Discount Price: $249.99

Features:

• Enjoy unlimited US calling, exceptional voice quality, and must-have features with no monthly fees or contracts
• Receive caller-ID, call-waiting, and voicemail at no extra charge; Pay as you go for low-cost international calls
• Hear voicemail and customize settings in the ooma Lounge
• Extend the power of the ooma system anywhere you have a phone jack with an ooma Scout device
• Try out ooma's enhanced calling features with a free trial of ooma Premier, which includes a free second phone line, real-time message screening, one-touch Do Not Disturb and Send to Voicemail, a second personal number with private voicemail, and more

Accessories:

ooma Scout - Accessory to VoIP Phone Device with No Monthly Phone Service Bills

Customer Reviews:

Free Phone Service [Posted on 2008-04-21]
Received this product and had a very easy installation. My phone system is up and working. It did take 4 weeks to port my phone number over but I can be patient as no more phone bills.

No more phone bills! Great quality phone calls. [Posted on 2008-04-24]
Wow, I am an early adopter in general, and sometimes.. the cutting edge is the bleeding edge... however with the stock market the way it is, this has been the best investment I have made in a long time. It was easy for me to set up, and I expect it would not be hard for a less technical individual. Their support has been amazingly responsive. I always get a live person on the phone and they have been very knowledgeable. Since I got this phone system, there have been a few glitches, but they have always been fixed in a few days at most. For example, it had some problems when I dialed an extension to get to a specific person I was calling... within a few days, they had a software update (automatically pushed to the device.. I had nothing to do with the upgrade) and it just started working. I was able to port my phone number, which is very important to me as I have a business, and my ads have my number in them. A couple months ago, I received the best letter from my old phone company.. it included a CHECK! No more phone bills! The long distance is excellent (for calling canada at least) you pre-fund $10 into your account, and dial. before you connect, it tells you how many minutes you have remaining based on the location you are calling. The two line feature is amazing.. i can receive calls while on the phone, I can switch over (like call waiting,) or let the broadband answering machine pick up, or someone else can answer the phone!. This does require the extra scout, but you only need one scout, plug a wireless base into the hub, and another into the scout, and you have more phones than you know what to do with! (each of my old wireless base stations had multiple handsets...)
I could go in.. but just to sum up... Love it!

OOMA Phone [Posted on 2008-04-27]
This device is great! It replaced my VOIP Vonage service and I have been thrilled with the sound quality and performance.

their business plan has changed!  [Posted on 2008-05-02]
okay, I should have purchased OOMA when it was selling at $400, it offered the second line and privacy features that I thought I would still get them when the priced dropped to $249. Bar hum bug. I may raise the rating once I see the real savings from just having a basic line and how the international feature. But disappointed that the business plan changed soo quickly after initial release. I think Ooma should rethink the pricing for premia. Right now, the annual price = savings that I have just made by cutting off the caller ID and call waiting prices. So I have paid for a box with two features that we cannot use without paying a lot of money. C'mon Ooma, this makes no sense!

Otherwise, set up was easy and the costs of no caller ID and call waiting will be not be missed!

Amazingly clear voice! [Posted on 2008-05-02]
Let me start off by saying that I abandoned traditional telephone service back in 2002 when we switched to Vonage, and though Vonage has not been perfect, it's been more than acceptable (until now) for the low fixed cost of unlimited calling throughout North America. However, I have not called Canada in over a decade (nor Europe or asia) except 800 numbers, so ooma's limitation to free calls only within the US is perfectly fine with me. Even so, the rarity of a call outside the US would still make ooma a better deal than Vonage's $32/month ($24.95 + $7 in taxes).

Now, I've only had the ooma service for a little over 24 hours at the time I write this, but what immediately struck me is the amazingly clear call quality. It's not only MUCH better than Vonage, but MUCH better than any wired telephone I have ever had, and I am not just referring to my end, which with Vonage was almost always nearly perfect, but the other end, who I called or called me, often complained of my vice being cut off at the beginning/end of a sentence and audio drop-outs, occasional garbling, etc. Understand, it was never bad enough for these people to be really annoyed. They typically said I sounded like I was on a cell-phone, but all said they got used to it. When I called my wife when she was home, from a landline somewhere, I could tell what my friends meant.

However, with ooma, I waited until my long distance friends and family were surely up and about (I am in Atlanta, and my family is all in Chicago, Denver and California), and called them each. Aside from some of them wondering where I was due to the different phone number (apparently, the text portion of the Caller ID did not go through, though I did register my name when I activated the service, so it may be a glitch of some sort) they all... ALL... remarked about how close I sounded.

In particular, My Dad, who does a LOT of business with international companies and is used to VoIP issues, though he does not use a VoIP provider himself, was impressed most of all. He said I sounded clearer than most calls made over the plain old telephone service, and remarked at how I sounded like I was "next door." He was so impressed, than when I told him how much ooma costs, he decided he wanted to try it out, especially when I told him about the optional ability to use a traditional landline with basic for 911 and as a backup (he is in his late '70s after all).

My best friend in illinois, who I speak with multile times weekly and is on a cell-phone, too was "blown-away" at how clear I sounded. He said he did not recognize my voice at first as we have not spoken in person in years!).

I called my wife on her office number and her iPhone, and in both cases, she said I sounded clearer than she has ever heard my voice over the phone!

Okay, enough raving about the voice quality... How about set up?

Well, as advertised, I got it up and running in under 20 minutes from the moment I opened the box after FedEx dropped it off at 8:30am. Activation took only a couple minutes and I picked the most memorable number I have ever had in my 43 years).

Connecting it is as simple as a stand-alone answering machine, though with one extra connection to the Internet. It turned out that the extensions in our apartment were not wired, so the ooma hub would not work with them, but next time I hear the phone guy in the utility closet across the hall, I'll ask him to punch them all down to be shared (or I could get a punchdown tool at Home Depot and do it myself, as the punch block is right on the wall in the laundry closet). I doubt most people would encounter this problem though. However, in the meantime, I plugged the ooma scout into the hub directly, and it works perfectly.

I absolutely love the convenience of the buttons on the ooma to let me listen to messages, screen calls, etc, just like the good old fashioned answering machines. I always hated voice mail due to the inconvenience of how to use it. Now, I just press play, listen, skip, delete, save, pause, stop. Can't get any easier!

The dual line feature is great, I tested it out with my cell phone, and can easily see it getting used often as the cell service only works in our apartment if you stand really still whilst talking, due to a lot of radio interference on our side of the building (according to AT&T Wireless).

In all, I am really impressed. ooma is what VoIP should always have been.

Now, let me be candid on what I perceive to be ooma's only real weakness compared to other VoIP providers such as Vonage. International calls. If you are someone who makes a LOT of international calls, especially to Canada, the UK, France and Italy), you should definitely do your homework and analyze your current call usage and compare Vonage (and other VoIP providers) and ooma's long distance pricing. Vonage includes free calling to those countries I listed, whilst ooma charges as little as about 2 cents/minute to LANDLINES in those countries, but watch out... calling mobiles in those same countries using ooma can cost quite a bit more! But, if you are like me, and the vast majority of your calling is in the US, then ooma is definitely the better deal.

We're keeping Vonage )as a backup) for a couple more months or so, forwarding call to the ooma number to see how ooma works out, and if all goes well, when the free ooma premier service offer ends in 90s days, we will cancel Vonage and keep the ooma premier service, which costs have what Vonage costs (the extras are worth it to us). We won't port he number though since the ooma number is better than the one Vonage gave us when we moved here from out of state last month.

Thanks for reading. I hope this was helpful! I set a reminder in iCal to update this review in a month.

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