Internet phone service

[dtbach]

We are moving and thinking of ditching our land line and moving our phone number to a VOIP type service.


Have seen good things about Ooma and MagicJack. But would like user experiences and comments.


Thanks

 

[MBAustin]

We've used Ooma for quite a few years now and have been very pleased. We do pay the extra for the premium level, but it's still way cheaper than a traditional land line.

 

[steelyman]

I’m also pleased with Ooma Premier and even more so after switching to fiber Internet (much more reliable and, according to friends, improved call quality).

[ADDED] My major complaint about Ooma is that you can’t receive or send text messages. Those are increasingly used by companies for authentication. I believe Ooma for Business handles them but not residential.

 

[bloom2708]

You need good internet service. Download is never a problem, but upload speeds can be quite low.

A scenario we experienced with Ooma. We could always hear the other person perfectly. However, our voice was garbled and digitized to the person on the other end of the line.

We always had good cable modem service/speed, but these issues caused us to transfer the home line to an "add a line" with our cell provider.

We phased out the home number slowly and our 3rd kid eventually just took over that number. Haven't had a land line for ~14 years.

 

[Sojourner]

I've been an Ooma (basic) user for about 7 years now. In the beginning, it was a screaming bargain at only about $2/month, compared to over $35/month for my AT&T landline. The price has gone up over the years, though, now hovering just under $7/month. I've considered canceling it recently, considering how rarely I use it. But for anyone interested in VOIP and wanting the "look and feel" of a landline, I would recommend it.

 

[jim584672]

I've had MagicJack for years, $30 a year if you do a 5 year renew.

 

[lawman]

Ooma basic over fiber optic works great..

 

[xlf11]

Google Voice for free local to anywhere in the US, also free long distance to Mexico and Canada as well low fee for the rest of the world.

 

[travelover]

Google Voice for free local to anywhere in the US, also free long distance to Mexico and Canada as well low fee for the rest of the world.

That is what I use for most outgoing calls and I use my cell phone for incoming calls. GV used to route to my cell phone automatically, but I never give out my GV number anyway.

 

[RetiredAndLovingIt]

I'm still using Google Voice with my Obi 200. Totally free for the 10 years except for the cost of the device. Polycom is no longer supporting the devices so when/if it dies, I will still be able to get my GV calls via my cellphone on the google voice app.
Obi's can still be activated till 2023 and are available used on EBAY

 

[RetiredAndLovingIt]

That is what I use for most outgoing calls and I use my cell phone for incoming calls. GV used to route to my cell phone automatically, but I never give out my GV number anyway.

My Google Voice number is my private family number and I rarely answer my cell unless the caller is in my contacts.

 

[target2019]

And you can get another google voice number by adding another email, and transfer the landline number to that account.

I used to think the landline number was important (ported to tracphone), but it really fell by the wayside and I let it go...

 

[mountainsoft]

We are moving and thinking of ditching our land line and moving our phone number to a VOIP type service.

Have seen good things about Ooma and MagicJack. But would like user experiences and comments.

We have been using 1-VoIP for many years. We have the lowest $8.95 plan, which works out to just under $14/mo after taxes and fees. Includes lots of spam filtering tools, white lists, black lists, voice mail, etc. We have been very happy with it.

https://www.1-voip.com/residential-voip.php

I set my mom up with the Ooma basic service at her assisted living. It's just over $7/month (including taxes/fees), but I had to buy the $100+ Aero phone adapter to get started. It took a bit of work to get set up with the facilities WiFi, but it has mostly worked well.

Overall we have liked both services. I think mom's Ooma service has issues more often (I have to restart her phone adapter 2-3 times a year), but I don't know if that's an issue with Ooma or the assisted living's WiFi service. She gets a lot of junk calls, but uses her phones voicemail to screen out calls. She basically doesn't answer any number other than my home phone. She won't even answer if I call with my cell since she doesn't recognize the number.

I occasionally have to restart my 1-Voip phone adapter too, but it's far less often, maybe once a year at most. Usually what happens is I can receive a call and hear it, but the caller can't hear me. If I remember right I mostly solved that by setting a fixed IP address (port?) in my router. I can't remember the details, it has been quite a while since I've had to fiddle with it.

Either VOIP service is a huge improvement over my traditional landline service. We had no caller ID, no spam filtering, no long distance calling, and were paying over $100/month. Ouch.

We each have cell phones too, but the signal here is weak to non-existent depending on the day. I also just like having a landline at home.

 

[dtbach]

Does Ooma allow you to keep your land line number? MagicJack does so I was leaning there, but if Ooma is good, I might go that route.

 

[Sojourner]

Does Ooma allow you to keep your land line number? MagicJack does so I was leaning there, but if Ooma is good, I might go that route.

Yes, you can port your LL number over for a small fee. I decided not to do that when I signed up for Ooma, as I was getting way too many spam calls on that number.

 

[steelyman]

Yes, you can port your LL number over for a small fee. I decided not to do that when I signed up for Ooma, as I was getting way too many spam calls on that number.

I opted for a new number also as I was moving out of state in 2015 (when I signed up for Ooma) and wanted a particular area code from here.

I also bought an Ooma handset that works really well and sits in my office just like those old cordless phones.

When I bought my Telo I also got some Bluetooth wi-fi dongle that worked but turned out to be unnecessary.

I also successfully connected the Telo to my existing home wiring (that takes some care/instructions) but that wasn’t necessary either.

Ooma Premier opens up some nice add-ons like a very good phone app and a free extra number. You can use your cellular network in addition to VoIP (I don’t know if that’s Premier-only).

 

[Ncc1701]

You really don't need it. Put Wifi extenders in your house so that you have a strong signal and turn on wi-fi calling on your cell phones.

 

[pb4uski]

My Ooma dashboard says that we have used Ooma since May 2011 (when we moved to our current home... we shifted to Ooma because we wanted to keep the phone number that we had had for the previous 25 years). At the time our phone bill was $40/month and since then we have saved $5,291.

We've been very pleased. For a hile we had a 1/2 second lag that mde conversations difficult and not intuitive but it turns out that was an internet problem and not an Ooma problem.

We paid for the upgraded Premier level for many years but then I dropped it so our last monthly bill was $5.40.

 

[OldShooter]

We're coming up on four years with Ooma at our city house and have been very pleased. We have the premium service. For two or three years we built our Ooma contacts list from phone calls received and made, then we switched the filtering to route all calls from numbers not on the contact list to VM. That essentially eliminated junk calls actually ringing the phone. Very nice. We ported our old phone number and have the Ooma box connected to our house phone wiring, so other than the filtering it is pretty much the same experience as before.

We switched our lake home phone to Ooma a year or so ago and do not have the premium service there. This gives us connections that are a little more solid than our cell phones give us, so for the minimal cost we keep it. IMPORTANT: The ability to port numbers depends on the telephone company having some kind of porting agreement. Our rural coop phone company does not have this agreement, so we were unable to keep our old number. That is an annoyance but we rarely got inbound calls to the lake home anyway. So porting is not a 100% thing; best to check.

 

[euro]

We are moving and thinking of ditching our land line and moving our phone number to a VOIP type service.


Have seen good things about Ooma and MagicJack. But would like user experiences and comments.


Thanks

I have been quite happy with Ooma. It does everything we need and costs are very low

 

[Bamaman]

I've had MagicJack for years with no problems.

Only thing is that the longest phone call I can make is 90 minutes. My sister talks more than that when she calls.

 

[RetMD21]

We have used Ooma Premier for years. Call quality improved when my ISP did a mandatory speed upgrade. We send all calls to voicemail except contacts. We just plugged the Ooma box into out home phone outlet so we have 4 extensions.

 

[MC Rider]

Bought a little black box from I forget where that says Polycom and Google voice on it.
Got it set up with a free google number and no bills since.
I read it is becoming "unsupported" soon. Will probably just drop the "land line".

 

[Jerry1]

You really don't need it. Put Wifi extenders in your house so that you have a strong signal and turn on wi-fi calling on your cell phones.

Agree. We had a land line through our cable company and we never used it. We’re so tied to our cell phones now, there just doesn’t seem to be any value to a land line voip or not. I don’t have a great signal at my house, but I turned on WiFi calling and I have zero issues with using my cell phone at home.

 

[RetiredAndLovingIt]

Bought a little black box from I forget where that says Polycom and Google voice on it.
Got it set up with a free google number and no bills since.
I read it is becoming "unsupported" soon. Will probably just drop the "land line".

You probably have an Obihai 200. At some point Google will make some kind of change to the Google Voice service that will require a software upgrade to keep the Obi device working and Polycom who purchased Obihai won't be investing any money on upgrades for it and it my be many years before there is an issue.
There are many other options of having the calls ring to your cellphone or multiple cell phones, tablets, PC's or laptops or pay service like Ooma and Magic Jack.
I just like talking on my old clunky cordless extensions when I'm home but if I lose them no big deal.