Ooma Telo Review Free Home Phone Service

I recently converted from Vonage to Ooma Telo because Vonage was costing me $33/month after taxes and everything. When you add that to the cost of naked DSL from AT&T ($42.95), it was actually a worse deal than AT&T's phone + internet bundle which is only $59.95. I was attracted to Ooma because I thought it would be an easy switch over from Vonage, and I want to save money. Here are some notes I recorded during the process:

Notes:
-Vonage is costing me more than AT&T because naked DSL is $42.95/mo and Vonage is $24.99/mo = $67.94 + taxes. AT&T bundle is $59.95/mo + taxes for DSL + unlimited local and long distance.
-Ooma cost is $187 + $120 for Premier w/phone port = $307. Vonage is costing me $33/month = $396/year. 3 years of Vonage is $1188. 3 years of Ooma with Premier = $571.
-My Speedtest data is 43ms ping, 5.66Mb/s down, .43mb/s up
-Phone number transfer request from Vonage account submitted on 2/1, completed on 2/16...exact day they said it would. Done perfectly! Vonage automatically closed my account, didn't even have to call them.

Pros:
-Call quality is perfect..not so much as a crackle.
-Telo unit has adjustable backlit buttons...nice to be able to turn it down a notch.
-Turning on call forwarding worked within 2 minutes.
-Fast service on technical support calls. Immediately on 2 of them, 1 minute on third call.
-Telo functionally is really cool device with ability to check vmail on speaker, send calls to vmail. Also very cool looking.
-Everything is clearly marked on Telo, instructions are easy to follow
-Faxing works great with *99 prefix
-No contract, walk away after a month if you so desire, although it wouldn't be very cost effective..
-I have Telo installed behind my Linksys WRT54G router with QOS giving higest priority to the Telo MAC address, and ran Mozy backup on another PC, and call quality was almost perfect.
-[...] has a lot of cool features including the ability to create your own blacklist so telemarketers or other annoying people can't get through. It will either send it to your voicemail, or give them a number out of order message. Pretty cool!
Cons:
-Setup may be easy, may not. 15 minute setup is not entirely true...you will likely have at least a 20-30 minute firnware download/update. Make sure the firewall on your router is turned off before you plug it in to your router. (or enable required ports)
-Telo device does not have a built in led display like the Vonage V-Portal adapter.
-Telo device takes quite awhile to recognize an internet outage. In fact, if I unplug my router and then pick up the phone I actually get dial tone, but the call doesn't go through obviously. This leads me to believe the Telo gives the dial tone unless it realizes there is no internet connection.
-Telo device is large compared with the Vonage V-Portal. It has a lot of additional features that the V-Portal doesn't though. Just make sure you allow for its 5x7" footprint.
-Takes 1 minute to recognize network outage (Vonage 3 sec), 25 seconds to recognize it's back, and log back in.
-No ability to turn off voice mail, only set to max of 59 second answer.
-Very easy for power cable to fall out of the back. Recommend taping it to the back of the Ooma.
-My caller ID when I do an outbound call shows up as Ooma Inc. or Private Caller, instead of my name. (this was before my number port)
-Telo device causes interference to any speakers within a couple of feet. (by interference I mean a humming noise)
So far we have used our Ooma Telo Review to the tune of 220 incoming/outgoing calls, and a total of 839 minutes, and it has been perfect. No static. No dropped called. Flawless. So I obviously recommend the Ooma Telo Phone Service.
3/30/10 UPDATE: 588 incoming/outgoing calls, total of 2830 minutes (47 hours) and everything is still great. Still not a single dropped call that I can remember. My wife really likes having the voicemails emailed to her account so she can check them when she checks email messages. Still Highly Recommend!
8/18/10 UPDATE: Very ugly high profile outage for the Eastern US on 8/17 has me concerned. Little communication from Ooma during the event. Ooma lacks the redundant, highly available backend to sustain carrier outages without losing service. Not able to forward calls to cell phone even during network outage. Downgrading from 5 stars to 3 stars due to this event.
1/20/10 UPDATE: Quality and availability since the outage last August has been flawless. Coming up on my 1 year mark with Ooma, and all-in-all it has been great. Upgrading to 4 stars.