The other day I had lunch with some friends and one mentioned that he was reducing his monthly bills by dropping cable, installing solar and switching his home phone to Ooma. He had Ooma for 6 months and was quite pleased with it. I had tried Ooma about 1.5 years ago and written about it; unfortunately my experience back then wasn’t as positive. I decided to give it another try as the potential to save money is huge. In the last few years, my phone bill has gradually risen while the features have gone down (I had lots of features with Qwest over a decade ago including a blacklist, then with MCI I had voicemail that forwarded to email. Now I don’t even have voicemail as there is an extra charge for it.)
This time I just plugged the Ooma into the back of my Time Capsule (it had an open port) and forwarded my home phone to the Ooma number for testing. So far through a few calls, there have been no complaints. I’ll give it a few weeks and I’m crossing my fingers. Even if I stick with Ooma Premier ($120/yr + $3.50/month for taxes), the cost recovery (including number porting and getting a Telo handset) is about 7 months and then I’ll save about $50/month. My regular phone bill will just keep going up, so this may be the only way to keep a home phone without paying through the nose.
I’m crossing my fingers that this pans out!