OOMA vs Vonage
Today I did receive my ooma box that I got at amazon.com
at huge discount. I was quite impressed with the packaging of that unit, honestly I did not receive lately such quality product as ooma is, very nice package, beautiful documentation and unit itself quite nice. Setup was quite easy although I had to figure out where I am going to place both units. What I had difficulty was Internet feed and telephone jacks. I did finally figured out and connected main unit next to my sling box, then run wires to telephone jack and phone itself, scout unit I’ve placed in other room. As I said activation was quite easy, you first have to connect to the Internet to to activate that unit/service, you need to provide phone’s MAC address and then your name and address info. You have ability to port your number. What I did not like is the fact that you can sign up for premiere service which is $99 per year and if you do then you can port your phone number for free, but if you do not chose to go with premiere service then you have to pay $40 to transfer your phone, but they do give you 60 days to try premiere account. What they should do is give you option to pay $40 to transfer number so you can do it right away as it takes few weeks to transfer it, but at the same time they should give you credit if you do decide to go with premiere service within the trial period, but unfortunately they do not give you that option I think.
I had vonage for probably 2 or 3 years now, I was neither happy nor unhappy about that service. My biggest concern was that we at my house have our own cell phones, I did not want to spend money for land line, but I wanted to keep that number as so many institutions have it. So I did chose vonage $15 plan, with all those stupid taxes my price that I was paying was almost $25 per month. That comes down to $300 per year of money that I did not need to spend. We rarely used that land line but I just wanted to have it. Then my co-worker did mention about ooma, so I decided to give it a try, my calculations were simple, $300 for vonage or $199+tax + $40 number transfer ($250 around one time fee), its no brainier. My only worry is what if this company does not survive crisis and they will go our of business? what will I do with my number? will I be able to keep it in any way? I don’t know, well I am taking this risk then…
Now, how about voice quality? well I do not see much differences, I do believe its the same, at least I did not notice a difference. I’ve heard its reliable service, but I will be able to say something more in about a year or at least after few months of usage. So far my experience is quite satisfying and I am very happy to make such change and move towards this new phone service.
Ah, as a side note, if your power will be off, you will loose service with vonage since it does relay on power and Internet connectivity. I have fios, so fios is backed up by power battery from Verizon, I did connect my router, ooma and phone into another ups device, so if I do loose power in my neighborhood I think I should be fine, just keep it in mind, old phone that connected to your telco if it did not have power supply for voicemail or other fancy stuff such as wireless was able to make calls if there was a blackout, but new technologies in particular voice over ip (VOIP) does not have such ability unless ou provide source of power. It is quite important as in case of such situation you still want to be able to reach for help such as 911 service. What differentiate vonage from ooma is the fact that ooma has this extra port to connect to wall jack, I am not sure but who knows, maybe there is a way to use that line in case of an emergency, I will have to investigate this and see if it could be utilized. 
