AboutGerry Magill Expertise I am a Software Architect employed by a large multi-national communications company providing VoIP and tradtional TDM communications to Enterprise customers.
Experience
Past/Present clients IBM, SBS, Siemens, KPMG, Bank Berlin, Commerzbank
I am wondering if you are familiar with a device called Ooma? http://www.ooma.com.
And, if so, would you be willing to share your opinion about it?
Thank you for taking my question.
Answer The Ooma concept is a kind of spin on the Skype concept. In the Skype peer-to-peer concept there is basically (almost) no hardware owned by Skype to make the calls connect to one-another. The calls either go directly between the two parties calling each other or "bounce" off another 3rd party user to get to the other person you are calling if there is NAT traversal involved (i.e. one or more of the parties involved in the call, are behind a home router).
Ooma uses a similar concept of peer-to-peer communications with one additional enhancement. If you are calling Mary in Florida for example at area code 561, then it looks for other Ooma users in this area code that also have a land line hooked up to the Ooma box in parallel to their VoIP service. Lets say Tom lives in FL in area code 561 and also has the Ooma service but retained his land line number too (for 911 or fail-over in the case his internet connection goes down). When you call Mary, the call gets diverted via IP to Tom and goes out on Tom's land line!! To avoid confusing Mary they hide Tom's caller-ID from her, so she does not see the call coming from Tom. However, due to telemarketers and hassle callers, most subscribers nowadays dont accept calls that have no caller-ID. So your call may well never make it to Mary. However, if she does accept calls from people not showing their caller-ID, she will get your call.
This obviously has major security risks associated with the concept. A simple plain old phone plugged in within Toms house will allow Tom to listen in on your calls to Mary!
Also, obscene calls to Mary using Toms service would make it very difficult for the phone company and law enforcement to track. Tom may end up getting in a lot of trouble and having to prove his innocence about that Al-Quida deal with Mary....
Leaving that aside, the initial hook-up costs $399 plus $39.99 for each box you require. However, you have no monthly fees. Compare that to www.broadvoice.com for example, who charge $19.95/mth and you could purchase 20 months of service from them for the price of the $399 sign-up. In addition you would get free unlimited calls to 21 other countries outside the US in addition to same US service offered by Ooma. You do the math...
Going with Broadvoice or Vonage or one of the other pure VoIP internet providers would also give you the peace of mind of not having to use someone elses land line to make calls on. You also dont have to worry about the Fed's knocking on your door to ask you what that deal was all about that Tom made with Mary.... oh and by the way, here's a tape Tom made of your sexual dialog with Mary. How much do you want to buy it for, he asks...
Serious business users may want to give it a rain check for now.
