Ooma Telo VoIP Free Home Phone Service. Affordable Internet-based landline replacement. Unlimited nationwide calling. Low

10 reviews for Ooma Telo VoIP Free Home Phone Service. Affordable Internet-based landline replacement. Unlimited nationwide calling. Low

1. 

   Rated 2 out of 5

   LFoD-NH – August 9, 2018

   UnreliableGreat concept and just fine when it works, but you can’t count on it working when you need it. Having spent about 5 months with this now, I seriously doubt their SQA knows what the hell they’re doing and judging by some of the things I’m seeing, I doubt they review their code before moving it into production. Note that the following reflects the features one gets with the premium service (phone and home security), not the free service. The premium service is quite reasonably priced, IMHO.The Phone:It is kind of a neat concept that combines an Internet phone service with a home security hub. On the phone side, we have numerous issues. For example, one time there was some kind of routing problem so we couldn’t call my in-laws in Florida. That took days for Ooma to solve. We bought 4 of their handsets too, but that’s not strictly required as you can connect other phones to the phone jack on the back–even wire it into the house wiring. Unfortunately, some of the handsets would get hung up in a weird state that required me to pull out the battery and restart the handset. It’ll also. Occasionally we can’t make calls. Occasionally we can’t receive calls. Some times only one side can hear. Some handsets don’t display caller ID. Recently the hub has been out of service briefly because they’re performing updates…not that big a deal if that will fix things. Sometimes you need to simply unplug the hub and plug it back in to restart it. Not good.It’s that you get a second phone number with Ooma and when you use their handsets you can have two simultaneous calls going. This has turned out to be more of a curse than a blessing, because we get a lot of calls for the previous owner of the number, which we constantly have to block. It would be nice if we could do a blanket block for incoming calls on just that number, so we could simply use it as another number for outgoing calls, or if in addition to blanket whitelisting or blacklisting, we could do it differently for different numbers. So, we could allow all incoming except explicit blacklists on our normal number and blacklist everything except what’s in our phonebook for the other one.Other things I like: (1) I like cloud-based voicemail and being able to get home voicemail notifications and listen to them while away. (2) I like being able to make calls using my phone while away. It’s convenient if your phone doesn’t have WiFi calling. But, it’s not always reliable, just like everything else.The handsets are not all that functional and the user interface obviously wasn’t well planned, making it less obviously navigable than our old Panasonic handsets. It would be nice if the interface were better designed and had the functionality one can get on with the website, including managing blocked numbers and things like that. Another annoying thing is that the handset keys don’t repeat when navigating menus, so scrolling is a pain. When it works, thankfully most of the time, the call quality is good.Home Security:The handsets, as well as the sensors use DECT-ULE. DECT-ULE is not as common for home security sensors as Zigbee or Zwave, but it seems to work very well. It’s pretty long range and it is a pure star topology, not a mesh network. This is a an unmonitored system, that is no one is professionally monitoring your home security. Instead you use your phone to get alerts and it has a nice integration with the phone system so that you can press a key if you set it up to get a phone call on an event to call 911 WITH YOUR HOME NUMBER that is on-file, so 911 knows where your home is. You can get alerts via a phone call, push notification, SMS (and inside the house announcements). From any of these it’s easy to call 911. The system, through your app has multiple modes like “Home”, “Night”, “Away”, and “Vacation”. You can turn it all off and you can establish custom modes too. Each mode can have different notification for different sensors. Another nice feature is geofencing to your phones. So, if all your family’s phones leaves your home it uses Geolocation to automatically change to “Away” mode and then sets it back when you arrive.Reliability is the same issue as we have with the phone–sometimes its just not functional. Recently we were on a week long trip away from home and all of the following happened: (1) The home hub rebooted because of maintenance. (2) The garage door sensor lost connection with the hub. (3) A water sensor detected “tampering” (4) Most annoyingly, the hub claimed to have lost connection to the Internet, even thought the Internet is functioning and we have battery backup and a whole house automatic generator. Here’s some advice, Ooma:(1) Don’t do any freakin’ maintenance on the hub when I’m away or on vacation. It’s too risky and leaves the system unprotected in the interim.(2) The garage door sensors are 3rd party V-Tech sensors, but sold by Ooma. They seem to have the most problems maintaining connection and that’s annoying, but they usually reconnect…eventually.(3) This is a common problem. There’s a little button on the back of these sensors so that when they’re removed the button goes out and you get a “tamper” alert. Unfortunately, if you’re unwilling or unable to screw these in the adhesive is simply not strong enough for some applications where there’s humidity or heat.(4) Yeah, that’s unreliable hub. If I was home, I’d simply unplug the hub and restart it. But, I’m not so I can’t. Since it’s lost connection with the Internet how is Ooma to do this remotely. Reliability is critical to this application folks! I can’t help think that the software update remote maintenance might have been responsible for this.We’ve had other issues too. For example, on another trip I wasn’t getting reliable notifications. How do I know? We have someone come by daily to look after the cats. Support isn’t as bad as I was lead to believe, but it’s damned tedious. Notifications are not reliably immediate or delivered in-order. Laughably the times on the notifications don’t take into account local daylight savings time, yeah really. Pairing new sensors is odd and seems to hang. You got to get out of the app and back into it to get confirmation. UI on the home security app seems nice, but it’s actually annoying because it uses a “slide” metaphor to slide between modes, but then it requires one to slide through other modes…Let’s see, “I want to go to a special mode. Which way do I slide? Oh, this way? No, that way? Damn, it’s now in vacation mode. Damn it!”Summary:This has a lot of promise and “Free” is a great deal, or would be if it was perfectly reliable or your home phones are not that important to you or, if you’re using home security you have a small home or apartment. Even the premium service is reasonably priced. There’s a lot of promise here and a decent amount of functionality. But, it’s got issues:(1) Reliability is poor and it fails in weird ways at bad times. That’s not something you want in your home phone or security system.(2) Use cases and user interfaces not that well thought through.(3) Adhesive for sensors is insufficiently strong.They could use more features and more sensors. Not sure why they don’t also have Zigbee integrated into this for home automation purposes. But, PLEASE, just make it rock solid reliable. I can live without new features. Reliability should be Ooma’s #1 priority.I’ve got a lot invested in this system: the Hub, 4 Ooma handsets, and 14 sensors. Judging by the number of hub updates recently, it looks like they’re working on the software and I’m hopeful that it’ll get more reliable. I was thinking about getting the ButterflyEye cameras, but no way am I putting more money into this until I’m confident that they’ve straightened out the reliability issues. I just don’t have confidence in the their software development processes. I’ll give them another year and if it hasn’t improved significantly by then I’ll be looking for both a different phone service and home security system.

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2. 

   Rated 3 out of 5

   C. A. Freeman – December 1, 2014

   JunkAs I have said in other reviews I get very few calls on my landline (most go to my cell phone). That makes it hard to test this unit but so far so good. The unit was a breeze to hook up and get online. That’s where the fun ended. I immediately signed up for the premier service to get free number porting. I had two numbers temporarily assigned to me while the porting process was going through. One number I had for my main landline and the other was for my fax machine (which I still haven’t got the function). When the number was ported I had to call tech support and have them separate the two numbers for the fax & the landline. The Telo only supports four wireless peripherals so I had to use an ethernet cable to connect the fax machine. I had to make several more calls to tech support (very frustrating as their tech support is outsourced, in all probability to India). There were also several other stumbling blocks which required more calls to tech support. Some of them were handled with the chat feature and some were done by landline. Generally it was a quick process and I think I now have the unit where it should be. I’ll work on the fax later but for now the Telo is doing what I bought it to do, make and receive phone calls. It does that job quite well, call quality is comparable to or better than my landline plus all the other additional features with the premier service makes it a really handy device. I can receive my cell phone calls on the Telo handsets, I can set it to notify me via email or SMS of any voicemails. It has a robust call filtering system based on the Ooma community or you can set it to block certain numbers which can also be uploaded to the community database. Pretty slick. There are many more features with this unit that are explained on their website or here on Amazon. If you’re going to cut your landline and go with VOIP this is the way to go. Cost wise it’s a no-brainer.Update 12-20-14I have had my ooma long enough to say it’s a complete failure. I put off buying into the VoIP hype for quite a while. I heard too many horror stories about services like VONNAGE and others to make me gun shy. What prompted me to give ooma a shot was all the cutting-edge features. After reading all the positive reviews I decided to make the plunge. I bought the Telo, wireless and Bluetooth dongle, and four handsets. A real gamble I must say for the amount of money I spent. I immediately signed on with the premier service to get the free number porting for my landline. I also wired my fax machine into the Telo and using distinctive ring and a second number I was back in business……. wrong. I do have to say when this thing works, which is hit and miss, it’s fantastic. And that is the main problem, it is very undependable. So far today I’ve had to reboot the system twice because it lost the connection. Yesterday I had to do it three times. Other bugaboos: the phone will ring and all it will show on caller ID is searching for base. When I go to call log it will show that the call actually came from itself, weird, how does my own phone call itself? Other times I will get an outside call and the handsets will do the same thing….. Searching for base. Other times I will get the “no VPN” or “no management”. As far as tech support, if you don’t speak the Indian language have a lot of Excedrin handy. I have made numerous calls to tech support to no avail. Basically it’s a low grade way to get rid of the customer. What they’re saying is “if you force us to support our product were going to do it as cheaply as possible, after all we already have your money”.It makes no difference what the problem is they read off a list garbage on their support screen that applies to every problem you could possibly have. Tell them the fax feature doesn’t work and their reply is reboot. Tell them there’s a meteorite bearing down on your house and they’ll also tell you to reboot. Generally rebooting is what I do when this starts to have problems. Tell that to tech support and it flies right over there head.In all honesty I have tried my best to like this product. It has all the features I like, it’s economical, and it’s cool. But it fails to the point these features are meaningless. With my century link phone I at least knew that it was going to function, with the ooma it’s a crap shoot. Fortunately I get a lot more calls on the cell phone so when the ooma fails in that regard I’ve always got my phone nearby. As far as the nonfunctional fax system goes I have signed up with a web-based service for my faxing.If not for all the money and hassle I invested in this system I would throw it in the garbage. Many times while getting jerked around by tech support I have came very close to calling century link and getting my landline back.At some point in time ooma may correct all these problems, but until then I would avoid this system and stay with something you can depend on.Update 12-28-14I have now downgraded my rating to 1 star & labeled this mess as “junk”It works for outgoing calls, but only hit & miss for incoming. Phones rings & it says on screen either “enter phone number” or “Press button to join conversation”, or sometimes “searching for base”. Either way you’ve missed a call. The cell phone transfer feature is equally as flaky. Tech support is useless.I tried my best to like this system, lots of neat features, but is just too buggy for something you rely on. I will probably just port my number back to a landline & ditch this piece of junk.Update 3-16-15I have now official downgraded this mess to -0, even though Amazons stars only go down to 1. Missed the last 2 calls because I couldn’t get to my extension phones fast enough. every phone rang (even the fax, which BTW doesn’t work either) but when I picked up the handset, closest to the telo, all it said onscreen was “please enter number”. This is odd because usually it says “searching for base”. This is the handset closest to the OOMA, about 6″. Fortunately 90% of my call come to my cell & 10% to my landine of which 10% are junk. The part that irritates me is what I paid for this train wreck & the time spent trying to make it work.Update 2-10-16It seems to be functioning a little better since my last review. Its hard to tell as the vast majority of my call are cellular based. The next step will be to port my OOMA number to my cell phone. There are some really good features that OOMA has I just wish it was more dependable. My recommendation is only go with OOMA if you have a backup system like a cell phone.update 5-7-17After almost a year and a half I decided to upgrade the ooma system to three stars. That means “it’s okay”. Since the last time I reviewed this system I’ve had very little problems with it. Of course I still get very few calls on it so it’s hard to be objective. It does seem to be staying connected a lot better than it used to. The other day I was cleaning my desk and accidentally bumped it, bad move. The thing went off-line and I had to spend the next 20 minutes trying to get it back online. Unplugging and re-plugging both the Bluetooth adapter and the power cord. Finally it came back online and has stayed online since then. As I previously mentioned the ooma system has some very excellent features. My main complaints have related more to the hardware side of things than the actual service. If the hardware wasn’t so flaky I would give this system a five star review. Maybe I just got a bum unit. In all honesty though other reviewers had nothing but praises, so it’s a mixed bag if you’re looking to upgrade your Telo system.

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3. 

   Rated 3 out of 5

   Electronicbuff – August 20, 2016

   Ooma: Great for Voice communications but not totally ready for Faxes or Alarm SystemsThe Ooma phone service got better after a few adjustments but still wasn’t able to hit the mark for me. I wanted to use it to replace my VOIP line service that I’m getting from Wide Open West (WOW) cable service. My cable provider recently decided to raise their prices again, this time by about $15 a month. Before making a switch though and porting my phone number I wanted to make sure I had a viable replacement. With my current cable service from WOW my fax machine and alarm system function perfectly 100% of the time. I decided to order the Ooma and put it through some tests while retaining my working service for a six month time period. This would allow a good over-time comparison.PHONE LINE CONNECTION: I powered up all of my phone jacks in my home and they work perfectly. I’m not a fan of one or 2 cordless phones that have to be found. We have a phone in every room of the house including one out in the garage.To Make Your Current Phone Wiring Inside The House Work With Ooma:1) Disconnect your home lines from the Bell System line going to the telephone pole. – This is usually as simple as opening up the box outside your home and unplugging the phone connection – If there is no plug outside in the phone box simply follow the phone wires from the pole into your home and disconnect the incoming line from the rest of the phone connections for inside the house.2) Plug the phone line into the Ooma box and then plug the other end of it into a wall phone jack. This will power up all of your phones.3) If you have older phones with the bells, I suggest you silence all but 1 or 2 of the phones so you don’t pull too much power and make the Ooma base unit struggle.TALK QUALITY:- The talk quality for my end was perfect. People receiving sometimes commented that they heard static on the line during pauses between receiving words and transmitting them. This was hit or miss but overall I found it acceptable.FAX MACHINE ISSUES: My fax machine is only 3 years old and while it works perfect with Bell Telephone land lines in addition to W.O.W. VOIP and Xfinity VOIP cable services, I couldn’t get great reliability with Ooma VOIP. With the Brother rep we went through fax options and even tried setting the fax machine at lowest transmission speed (VOIP setting). While this helped greatly with sending faxes (Ooma detects fax transmissions), I was able to get the failure rate down to 20% receiving a fax was more problematic. Another problem I noted, even when a fax was received, was some of the lines of fax text received where thinner (blurred) compared to others. This was consistent on Ooma on all received faxes from multiple services (H.P. faxback 1-888-473-2963, Canon faxback 1-855-392-2666, and Brother 1-877-276-8437) failures. The failure rate was not acceptable to me.- The reason for the failure is due to the way that Ooma compacts the packets of data and later restores the data packets. Since the transmission is compressed and restored incorrectly faxes often fail. This compression is done much better with WOW Cable and Xfinity. Bell copper landlines do not compressed thus there is no problem.- Ooma and Brother techs were unable to fine a reliable solution to the problem. Brother simply suggested holding off on Ooma until they were more reliable.ALARM SYSTEM ISSUES: Another problem I had with Ooma was with alarm system transmissions. I have a fire/burg alarm at my premises that is monitored 24 hours a day. I have a lineman’s headset so I was able to monitor the communications sent by the alarm panel and sent from the alarm company. The alarm dialed the central station without incident and when the central station answered the alarm sent its tones. The problem was that the central station detected the tones (was suppose to be sent in Contact-ID format) but couldn’t determine what they were basically saying (once again because of the way Ooma compresses the data packets and later decompresses it). The central station would try multiple times to understand the transmission and finally hang up forcing the alarm to call again and retry the transmission. Normally the transmission takes 2-3 seconds once the central station connects. The alarm tried to transmit a hold-up signal about 15 times and was never able to successfully do so. Being able to program Honeywell panels I used the Compass Downloader software and reporgrammed the alarm to attemp to talk to the central station using a different language, instead of contact-id, and at a slower pace. Still no luck with even one successful transmission.- I worked with Ooma on this problem too and they acknowledge it and said they are still trying to work on a way to transmit contact-id signals as this is the most popular alarm transmission format. When they get it working I asked them to give me a call.OVERALL:BASE UNIT CONNECTIONS:- Connection for wall adapter- Connection for phone line (only 1 phone number can be connected to base. If you want a 2nd phone number for a line 2, available with Premium Service, you will need either to purchase the Linx unit or the Wireless handset from Ooma)- Connection for network (suggest you plug it into router as a priority device as the throughput is limited if you plug in your router behind it)PROS:- Way cheaper than traditional phone service or cable VOIP service- Fast and friendly customer service- Worked pretty decent for phone (speaking) services- Web interface allowed me to see incoming calls, outgoing calls, and time therein- Web interface allows you to change the dial tone sound- Web interface allows you to adjust voice mail answering ring count high so you can still use a traditional on-site answering maching- Premium service allows you to call forward your calls so no one knows if you’re in or out- Unlimited US calls- Voice mail can be set to send you a text or email (with message playable in email)- Premium service allows you to block typical phone solicitors- Premium service allows you to have 2 phone numbers- Billing can be done monthly with credit card- Can add a Linx unit and have it set up for the 2nd phone line or it can be on the same phone line as the base with Premium serviceCONS:- Some people complain that Ooma starts all users on Premium and then starts to charge for it after 30 days. Solution: downgrade it before your 30 day free trial is over to basic to avoid being charged an extra $10 for all the options- Basic service while it has caller ID it will only show the phone number (Names being displayed are pulled from data base for Premium service only)- Not reliable 100% for incoming FAX transmissions- Not able to use with ALARM SYSTEMS that use phone lines and employ the most popular transmission format (Contact-ID transmissions won’t work due to packet compression), Ooma has indicated that they are trying to find a fix for this problem currently.- Some people receiving your call may experience static in between words in your conversation- I wanted the 2 phone numbers. There is no way to get both phone numbers to work from the phone jack on the Ooma box. It would have been nice if they made it a 4-pin and used the standard 2-inner for line 1 and the 2 outside of these for line 2 like we did with bell equipment since the 80s.

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4. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   TrueGreen – September 2, 2016

   Ooma First ImpressionsMy main reason in moving from POTS (Plain Old (Landline) Telephone System) to Ooma (VoIP) is to BLOCK those annoying nuisance calls. With this in mind I intended from the start to get the Premier service over the Basic. I knew right up front what I was doing. This whole topic was made very clear to me by the Ooma website. As to the website, it was very helpful in explaining how I could integrate Ooma into my situation and to explain what I needed to get it started. This took hours, not minutes, because this was all so new to me. But, after I had spent the time, all the necessary information was right there on the website. When the product arrived all the time spent beforehand was well worth it. It made installation and set up go quite smoothly.I’ve only had Ooma a few days and it is not yet totally integrated into what will be my former landline system. I am in the process of having my landline number ported. In the meantime I purchase the HD2 handset so I could begin to use Ooma and to use as my personal phone when my present cordless phones are connected.Activation went very smoothly with one hiccup. The instructions that came with the Telo were very easy to follow. The hiccup came as I went thru the online activation process. It would not accept my credit card (part of the activation process). I tried several times with different cards. I ended the process thinking that acivation was not successful. I called Ooma Support and they were very patient and helpful. It turned out that activation was succesful, but the credit card was not showing. They stayed with me while I repeated the activation process on another browser. This did not work. They then told me how to log into my account online and insert the credit card information. Everything was a success and I was very happy with Customer Service.I later went thru the online process to Port my landline phone number. When completed, I wasn’t sure that I had done this right. I used the online Chat service and they confirmed that they did not get this order which was all I wanted to know. I thought I knew what I did wrong and repeated the process online. This time it was successful and I got immediate confirmation. Ooma tells you that it could take 3-4 weeks for the number to be ported. It is already scheduled to be done in a week.I decided to use Linx to connect my present cordless phone system to Ooma. Setting up Linx was very easy and went according to the enclosed intructions. I haven’t connected my cordless phones yet. I’m waiting till my landline phone number is ported.I purchased the HD2 handset to use to get used to Ooma while awaiting the number port. I also want it as a private phone for my own use. I don’t exactly like the feel of the buttons, but it seems fine. I did have a problem where the batteries went dead after a few days. I called Customer Service. They thought the problem was with the batteries that came with the unit. They quickly offered to send a whole new handset (for free exchange), but I opted to just buy a new set of name brand AA rechargable batteries for $10. This was the problem. Again, good Customer Service._______NOTE: Since I wrote this I found that the new batteries also weren’t charging. I accidently solved this by unplugging the charging cradle from the PLUG end (it didn’t help to unplug from the cradle end).So basically I am totally pleased. Everything is working fine. Setup was very easy. The phone sound quality is fine. The whole process of going from POTS to Ooma has been painless. Customer Service was great. My one bit of advise is to put in the time studying what needs to be done to get the system up and working before you open any boxes. Depending on your understanding it could take hours. The website has everything you’ll need to know. That time spent is well worth it.ADDED NOTE: The porting process went very smoothly. It took 6 days. I then set up my home phone system using both Ooma HD2 handsets and my original cordless system that is probably 15+ years old. I used Linx to hook up my non-Ooma cordless phones. I’ve actually liked the way with which the Ooma phones work in my setup that I’ve added more of these than I had originally intended. I also used Linx to attach a Medical Alert system. This was all so easy to do and worked out extremely well.I ended up with a few very minor things that I couldn’t figure out. In these cases Ooma Support by phone and chat resolved these very quickly.Now I’m just waiting for the silence of blocked nusance calls. In summary, starting with deciding on which VoIP to go with right thru to getting everything set up, I am very impressed with Ooma. As a bonus I got a great customer service rep at my original landline carrier and she made sure my other internet services, minus the phone, stayed in tact and that the full cost of what I was paying for the phone was removed. IMPORTANT: If I hadn’t contacted my original landline provider’s customer service I would only have saved $5 off the cost of the bundled phone. The customer service agent advised me to move internet and tv to a different bundle and I thus saved $30. She also set it up as an extension of the original contract so that I wouldn’t have to pay a termination fee on the original bundled services.Update: Have had Ooma for about 2 weeks now and NO MORE NUISANCE CALLS, which was my main reason for making this change.

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5. 

   Rated 4 out of 5

   Vincent Worth – July 31, 2014

   Good Box, but U-verse Integrated Modem/Router and Very Long DistanceI am a long-time, senior technical manager. My internet provider is AT&T with U-verse at 6 Mbps. After 3 days of testing and 8 calls to Ooma tech support the product is now functioning in an acceptable manner.Before the Ooma arrived, so that I could use the phones on two different jacks,I had a new phone jack installed close to my router; I did not want to use the Ooma Wireless Plus Bluetooth Adapter because of problems reported on the internet. Installation of Ooma was easy, except the first boot of the system takes at least 15 minutes and the box changes to several colors, which are not documented in their instructions; just wait until the box turns a constant royal blue. Outbound calls worked well immediately. Inbound calls were a disaster. Sometimes they worked perfectly; most of the time the phone never rang; sometimes the phone rang after six rings that the caller could hear issued. In low internet traffic periods, inbound calls seemed to work.Voices have a slightly deeper tone difference and slightly higher volume, which cannot be fixed; but the voice quality is as good as, or better than, the best of cell phones.Most of Ooma tech support is very prompt to answer, very courteous, but of little help. On my sixth call the 3rd level of tech support blamed my AT&T modem/router, yet when I called AT&T U-verse tech support, (which is excellent), their tests showed the device performing above their maximum speed rating with no lost packets. Then the 3rd level of Ooma support blamed a congested router somewhere along the way to their server, (45 miles away), or she said it could be their box. She wanted me to go to a friend’s house to install the box there to see if it works there, which I did not agree would be helpful unless a friend had identical equipment and internet service. She agreed to send me another box, just in case it is the Telo at fault, which I was very doubtful would fix whatever the problem was.The next day in disbelief that my first Telo box was at fault, on my 8th call to Ooma Support, Raymond A in the 2nd level of tech support looked at my current box from his end, (the replacement box was not yet due), and identified the problem right away. He said the problem was that I have an integrated modem/router, and therefore he needed to make a change to set my box to a different QoS service level; he further said that the previous support was mistaken in suggesting what was the problem. He changed the QoS (Quality of Service) setting in the box to 0 for both inbound and outbound calls from his end, and now it receives calls perfectly, including prime movie download time on Sat night and Monday business usage loads.Be careful. If you buy this product, don’t discontinue your land line service until you are sure you it works flawlessly. If inbound calls are not working properly, and if you are using Ooma’s voice mail answering service, you will see voice mails occurring when you were there to answer the phone. If you have Ooma voice mail set so that your home answering machine picks up the messages instead, then make test calls with your cell phone or have a friend call you in peak usage times, (the highest traffic is generally seen during afternoon and evenings during the week); otherwise you will not know if the inbound calls are working at all.The Ooma documentation has no reference to a modem with integrated router. The Ooma support reps are clueless, except for Raymond A. If you have an integrated modem/router and are experiencing lost calls, call and insist you talk to Raymond who can make inbound calls work for you by setting QoS (Quality of Service setting) to 0 for both inbound and outbound calls; (apparently QoS is only of value with low speed DSL internet connections, and the default settings for QoS on the box are a problem with higher speeds and integrated modem/routers). Be patient and persist until you finally get through to someone who knows something; there is a huge difference in the knowledge of their support reps, apparently because they are growing so fast that they have many inexperienced reps on the phone and most of their higher levels of support are no better than the first level. Their management appears to be oblivious to the many problems reported on the internet and their own forums, apparently only looking at their growing sales from Amazon, Costco, Walmart, etc.Thank goodness for Raymond A at Ooma; he made a good box, deficient in documentation, work well.Update on 8/4/2014A few people were hearing little chirping noises when I called them. Because reviews by others on Amazon mentioned that they had to relocate the Telo away from any motor, I moved the Telo 6 feet away from the modem/router and the UPS that has a small cooling motor; and because the Ooma-supplied Ethernet cable was not long enough, not shielded, and possibly even without twisted pairs, I replaced it with a longer Cat5e Ethernet Patch Cable that had shielding and twisted pairs. Those changes eliminated the chirping, noise, and associated slight voice breakup.Update on 9/5/2014I live in California. Calls to the East Coast had horrible (2-3 secs) delays and bad echo; conversations were in half-duplex or like walkie-talkies. This was totally fixed by changing codec to G711, which you can test by dialing *98 before you dial your number. If it fixes your delays, you can call Ooma support and have it made the default so that you don’t have to dial the prefix. There is also a sure-fire way to test your delays and the G711 fix: 1) dial 1-909-390-0003, 2) when it stops ringing, there is no voice answer, so just start talking, and measure the delay to hear your voice that is transmitted back, 3) then hang up and dial *98 first and then 1-909-390-0003, talking when the ringing stops. If the delay in hearing your voice has disappeared, then you know for sure that you need the G711 codec fix.I also experienced some serious voice dropout in calls, (even local calls), when I moved my Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) closer to my modem, which is strange because the data transmissions were not affected, only voice. By moving the UPS back to where it was 18 inches away from the modem, the quality of voice calls was restored.Update on 10/19/2014The person to whom I am talking hears a squealing if I hold the handset too close to my mouth and raise my voice, which serves to make me remember to stay calm whatever the subject being discussed. There appears to be nothing to remedy this. I think it relates to the previously stated volume being louder and tone deeper than a land line or a cell line, and nothing can be done to correct this — at least according to Ooma support.

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6. 

   Rated 4 out of 5

   PaulaB – November 16, 2022

   Lost a star for ZERO tech supportThis is my third Ooma in approximately 10 years. What I love about it: Unlike everyone else in the world (it seems), I hate carrying my cell phone around with me in the house, making sure it’s charged, etc. etc. I’m old, and while not a Luddite, I prefer having a phone in the kitchen, the bedrooms, and the living room. This internet-based “landline” is only $5/month, and no one can beat that price.When it works, it’s perfect! But when there’s a glitch, forget about it. About two weeks ago, I wasn’t receiving ANY calls. Phoned Ooma “customer support,” and after well over an hour on hold, was told I needed to speak with advanced support. That’s when I was disconnected. Tried a second time–same thing. Tried a third time–no dice. Altogether, was on hold for close to FIVE HOURS, with no resolution.I eventually figured out the issue; I had added a name to the “call block” list, and somehow my Telo decided on its own that I didn’t want any calls. Just removing that name did nothing–I had to turn off all blocking.When my call waiting stopped working, I ordered a new Telo. In the midst of activation, I was disconnected.It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around how a company can be so cavalier regarding their product. I wish there was an alternative at the same price, but alas, looks like I’ll be on hold with Ooma for a while to come yet.

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7. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Charlie – January 24, 2023

   A great way to save $ on phone billsI had an old Ooma Telo unit basically die on me and ordered this as a replacement.Tip for anyone in the same boat:Before installing the new unit, please make sure you call customer service directly and let them know you want to replace an existing Ooma unit with a new one.It took 24hrs or so to get the new unit registered to the account and once that is done, an email is sent to let you know that you can plug everything in.Works like a charm!

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8. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Audra Renth – November 26, 2022

   Pleasantly surprised….Much better than expected! Great purchase!I like a land line in the house in that its peace of mind in case of an emergency and convenient to not worry about making sure the mobile phones are constantly charged at home, however our land line phone bill had increased so much and we just don’t use it often so it was a waste of 30 bucks a month. I was researching other less expensive options and ran across Ooma Telo. After reading about it and the reviews I decided to try it. I had nothing to lose in that if it didn’t work it could be returned. Honestly I wasnt expecting too much. Well let me say it was a delight to be so pleasantly surprised with a purchase for a change. This Ooma Telo is honestly one of the best purchases I’ve made in a long time. The set up took a whole 10 minutes and the quality of the phone call is exceptional. No drag or delay, absolutely crystal clear. I sure wasn’t expecting such an easy set up and such great call and voice reception and sound quality. Calls sound just a good and just as clear as our wired line. It’s saving us 30 bucks a month’s too so this was an awesome deal. This was a great purchase…highly reccomend! Im a very happy customer!!

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9. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   lanica007 – December 16, 2022

   GET OOMA TELO. In CA you pay $6.00 a month and make all the calls U want!I LOVE OOMA. I was paying $42.00 for my landline with ATT. They were going to raise the price and I had heard Howard on the radio talking about how great OOMA was. That was ten years ago and my first purchased for $100.00 paid off. The machine has lasted ten years. I purchased my next one on Amazon and I am extremely happy. All my kids have received an OOMA for Christmas. Pls. save your self some money get yourself an OOMA. You don’t have to buy their phones. I purchase three Panasonic phones on sale and place them in the bedrooms and kitchen using my OOMA. I could never have only a cell phone, I need a phone in every room. Love my OOMA. Good LUCK

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10. 

    Rated 5 out of 5

    To be or Not To Be – December 10, 2022

    you could be saving money with thisI previously had a landline with Verizon. After I switched my landline number to Ooma, my Verizon bill dropped by around $30/month. I paid for a full year at Ooma for around $128. Monthly state taxes and 911 fees is about $7/month. So my monthly bill at Ooma is about $17 to $18/month. That’s like almost 50% monthly savings. You can go online and play around with the phone & spam settings. Ooma uses Nomorobo to detect spam callers.FYI, you do need internet connection and a wireless phone to use this. If you want your Ooma device to be wireless, they have an adapter which you can purchase. You can also purchase the phones from Ooma, but its probably cheaper if you buy them somewhere else. Also the phone jacks scattered throughout your home will stop functioning once you switch carriers.

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