ooma Core VoIP Phone System with No Monthly Phone Service Bills

I wanted to get rid of our landline completely and use mobile phones, but my wife wasn't ready to cut the cord. Wanting to lower our monthly expenses ($45/month for Comcast Digital Voice), I started looking at alternative phone providers.

I came across Ooma and was intrigued: it seemed like it would meet our needs (keeping our phone number and using our existing phones) and it had no monthly bill! Sounds great!

I took the plunge, thinking that I could always send it back if it didn't work well. When the box came, I quickly set it up and got it running after working through one hiccup. Other than the presence of the Scout (a little box that you put in front of your home phone to use Ooma), nobody was any the wiser. I still had my Comcast phone service, which went through the Ooma for inbound calls as well as outbound local calls. Ooma kicked in for long distance calls and used my Internet connection instead of my landline. It worked great!

After a few days to test it out, I decided I'd keep it, so I bought a premiere subscription ($100/year) which included the cost porting my number to Ooma (normally $40). I sent in the paperwork, and four weeks later my port was completed and I was done with phone bills! The Ooma handles all of my phone calls with no issues at all, and the quality is fantastic: on par with Comcast Digital Voice.

We've been Ooma-only for the past few weeks, and have experienced no problems so far. Count me among the satisfied customers.

I recently set up another Ooma at my mother-in-law's house, and soon she'll be phone-bill-free too!

A few notes:

1. Ooma does not have any monthly cost, unless you buy the Premiere subscription for $100/year. The only thing you'll need to pay for are international calls, which they charge at very competitive rates (see their website for details).

2. Since Ooma uses your internet connection, if your internet goes down (due to a power outage, etc) you'll have no phone service.

3. Ooma does have 911 support: I called 911 to verify that it works, and the operator immediately could see my name, address, and phone number.

4. If you don't want to port your phone number, you can dump your local phone service completely, get a new number, and be up and running as soon as you set up the box.

5. When you receive your Ooma, you need to activate it on the Ooma website before it will work. The directions are clear and it takes about a minute to activate the device.

6. You should typically put your Ooma between your cable/dsl modem and your home router. The device ships with the cable needed for this. You can also put the Ooma inside your home network, but you won't benefit from Ooma's ability to restrict internet traffic to insure good phone quality.

7. Right now, faxes over Ooma don't work very well, at least in my experience. I typically scan a document and email it as a PDF. Your mileage may vary. Ooma is working on implementing a standard FOIP (fax over IP) service in the future.

8. According to press releases, Ooma users and Skype users can talk for free. I imagine that if you call a Skype user's phone number they don't get billed for the call, and likewise if they call you they don't get billed. I haven't tried this. Get more detail about ooma Core VoIP Phone System with No Monthly Phone Service Bills.