I recently got a letter from Cox telling me my phone bill was going up again. It lit a fire under my rear-end to find a VoIP solution and tell the phone companies to bug off.
I went to get a Magic Jack, but saw that there were quite a few other solutions available on the shelf. One of them was Ooma. I hadn’t even considered Vonage as their monthly rates seem almost as outrageous as a regular phone company!
I researched it and found that they let you port your existing telephone number, offer 911 service, voicemail, email notification of missed calls / voicemails, and bluetooth. Oh, and it plugs directly in to your router, so you don't have to have a computer on in order to use it.
For 6 months you get their premier service for free, after that it's $9 / month and has a ton of cool features, most notably 2nd line, 3 way calling, Voicemail-to-Text, and blacklisting.
The setup was easy on their website and in no time had a working VoIP phone. The quality is superb and the voicemail system is awesome. The only downside... you have to shell out $190 for the advanced unit (Telo) and pay the $3 / month in federal taxes. But, compared to Vonage which charges almost as must per month as Cox, QWest, and other telco's, this seemed like a logical decision. I should break even after 5 months.
I think the final selling point of this product was that it plugs into the router and not the computer. Everyone has a router that’s on 24/7, but bot a lot of people have a computer that is.
In 3 weeks I should have the phone number ported and then no more $38 / month phone bills!
Subscribe