Ooma Free Phone Service

About a year ago a friend of mine told me about  Ooma, a home phone that uses your internet connection rather than land line from your local phone company.  I used to have a Qwest local phone service that cost me about $25 a month . It covered having  the land line and local calls, no long distance.  So I decided to cut the cord and switch to Ooma. After about 14 months I am very satisfied with this device and would highly recommended it.

Switching to Ooma  free home phone requires some initial investment. You have to buy the Ooma device which runs from $149.99 to $199.99, aside from this if you would like to keep your old phone number you have to pay one time fee in amount of $39.99 . If you don't have a land line now, or if you don't mind getting a new number you can get it  for free from Ooma. They even let you pick your number out of the few they have available. So in that case  then you don't have to pay this one time fee ($39.99).

After your initial investment,  your cost of having Ooma is only about $4.50 a month . This fee goes towards some federal taxes.

So last year I canceled my Qwest land line service, purchased ooma for 179.99 at best buy, paid 39.99 to keep my number and it took me  about 11 months to brake  even (my up front cost was paid off by not having  the Qwest bill for 11 months).
So now I only pay   $4.54 a month to  Ooma as opposed to $25 a month before with Qwest. Aside from saving $20  month Ooma has a lot of great fetures such as :

-Caller ID
-Voicemail,
-Free USA long distance calls
-Competitive  international rates , for example calling Germany costs 2.6c a minute.
(international service is pre-paid).
-Ability to listen to your voice mail by logging in your online Ooma account


Downside of having your phone through internet is that no internet means no phone. So  reliable cable or DSL connection is needed. Over the last year I used 7mbps DSL, and 30 mbps cable internet and Ooma worked fine with both. I think there was one instance when Ooma service was down for maintenance and it came back within couple of hours.

Even though ooma depends on internet I don't think it's a huge disadvantage since for emergency calls you can still use your cell phone if by chance  internet is down.

Ooma can also work with wireless signal but you need to purchase a special adapter for that.

My set up is a little unconventional  I use power line adapters to network my computers. So my internet modem is downstairs by my desktop, it hooks to the router and then from router to the power line adapter plug. My Ooma is upstairs, I have a power line adapter plug next to it. So an Ethernet cable goes from power line adapter to ooma and then another one from ooma to my laptop. A regular phone cable connects ooma device with my phone. So basicly both my laptop and ooma get internet through one power line adapter.

Here is a link to Ooma web site www.ooma.com. They have a very good customer support and tons of good information about their product . I used their chat option a lot while  deciding if I should buy this product.

So long for this post , check out my links below for some  great free or very inexpensive products and services.

FREE LISTINGS OF HOMES FOR  SALE IN ROCHESTER AND SE MINNESOTA 

FREE LISTINGS OF FORECLOSED HOMES IN ROCHESTER AND SE MINNESOTA

BUILD A WEB SITE FOR FREE USING MOONFRUIT , CLICK AND DRAG WEB BUILDER

GET FREE OVER THE AIR TV WITH A WINEGARD INDOOR TV ANTENNA