Dump Ooma and go with just iPhones?

[Lsbcal]

We have had several power failures in recent years. Most recently our area got a big rainfall (7.8 inches in a day) and the power company equipment was stress tested. When this happened our Ooma was not functional (wifi needs power). Meanwhile our iPhones were our communication sources and data sources.

The Ooma was there to keep our old "home phone" number and for redundancy. But if it is not useful when the power goes down due to bad weather or fires, why keep it around?

Any thoughts on other redundancy schemes? We could port the "home phone" number to some cheaper cellular phone like Tracfone that uses Verizon (I think) since our current iPhones are on Tmobile. But we had to go with the whitelist capability on Ooma due to, I suppose, the ancient phone number being on scammers lists. I don't know if something like Tracfone would give us the screening capability we want.

So maybe just go with what so many people are doing and rely on our iPhones with Tmobile? We would just dump the old phone number and Ooma. Thoughts?

 

[PaunchyPirate]

I’ve been cell phone-only for about 8 years. I don’t regret it one bit.

 

[steelyman]

I have a UPS that only services my modem and router, which is enough to keep Ooma Premier going during a power outage (assuming the ISP has their own backup power).

Cellular service isn’t a slam dunk in my home area.

 

[tulak]

I ported the old landline number to google voice and only have a cellphone, probably around 10 years ago. No regrets.

 

[Montecfo]

What if next storm blows down your nearest cell tower but no power outage?

You will want that land line.

This from the department of redundancy department.

 

[Lsbcal]

I ported the old landline number to google voice and only have a cellphone, probably around 10 years ago. No regrets.

Does google voice just record messages and then you check them for important content, i.e. how to you sort out the scam calls? Is it a chore?

 

[Lsbcal]

What if next storm blows down your nearest cell tower but no power outage?

You will want that land line.

This from the department of redundancy department.

Apparently there are about 4 towers that we can access. I found this out when talking to a Tmobile rep. Our iPhones were not getting data but it turned out you have to disable wifi or that will interfere with the cellular data getting through.

In multiple power outages (fires, wind, water) we have had good cellular connections.

 

[Aerides]

What if next storm blows down your nearest cell tower but no power outage?

You will want that land line.

This from the department of redundancy department.

We live in hurricane territory and dumped our landline. While the above is true (and old school landline phones will work with no power, and no wifi), a short drive will usually get you to a cell tower even if none works at home. Depends how practical that is on your area of course.

Meanwhile, our landline was costing over $40 per month for bare bones service. And the last time we used it due to a full-on multi-day post-storm outage, where cell was kaput, was 2017. And before that was 2005.

So...nah, not remotely worth it. If OOMA isn't even a backup for your cell phones, it seems silly to me?
We don't have iphones, we just dumped our old phone number. But you could port it quite easily to other services these days. Porting is far less restricted than it used to be. You don't need even a dedicated phone. With Google Fi I can have multiple numbers ring on my account. Not sure how others work.

 

[RetiredAndLovingIt]

My google voice number is my landline home phone using an OBI200 which cost about $50 on Amazon and every plugged in phone in the house rings using the original house wiring.
I only give out my that number to family or friends. I get zero spam. I have it set up so when it rings at home it also calls my cellphone if that number is listed in my contacts so I'm never out of reach to family. If not a contact the call goes to voice mail. I stupidly gave that number to the Blood bank many years ago and they call regularly but I don't consider that Spam. You don't need the Obi unless you want a landline ringing at home. You can instead have the calls ring to your cellphone or just go straight to voicemail if you prefer.
When I'm home, I prefer to talk on my cordless landline phone.
I could certainly do without it and have all calls go to my cell but I've been using it like this since 2012 back when if you changed cellphone carriers you needed to get a new number so this worked for me.
There is tons of videos on using Google Voice on you tube if interested.

 

[jim584672]

MagicJack plus a cheap cell phone works for me.

 

[Chuckanut]

My Ooma is hooked into an old wireless phone system. That way I have a phone on every level of my home and the garage. Why? I dont carry my cell phone with me at home. If I have an emergency and am injured I don't want to have to crawl up or down the stairs to call 911. It's worth the $6.50 a month I pay in taxes and fees for the piece of mind.

Oh, that old fashioned phone was used once to call 911, though not by me. It was used by a family member at my house who suddenly had health issues while I was in the garage too far away to hear the cries for help. I first knew about the problem with EMTs pulled up in front of my place. Thankfully, it all turned out well.

 

[RobbieB]

I've had my land line number for 31 years now. I'm keeping it.

 

[tulak]

Does google voice just record messages and then you check them for important content, i.e. how to you sort out the scam calls? Is it a chore?

Google voice transcribes the message and sends me an email. Same for texts.

I checked my settings I don’t filter for spam. I never answer this line - or my cell unless I know the caller - so everything goes to voice mail/email. I find that for spam calls I only get ‘missed call’ notifications in email with no message. I delete these emails. I don’t get that many, so it’s not a big deal and this is a number that I use everywhere.

So to answer your question, it hasn’t been a chore for me. I haven’t really paid attention, but now that you mention, I’ll probably start noticing it. If it happens often, then I’ll enable the spam protection option and see if that helps.

 

[tulak]

What if next storm blows down your nearest cell tower but no power outage?

You will want that land line.

This from the department of redundancy department.

Who would you need to call?

If there’s no power outage, then you might still have internet and you can use wifi calling. And if things are bad, then odds are you won’t get through to whoever you want to call.

I guess this is one of those things I don’t worry about.

I think Chuckanut’s case is more likely, but if that happens to me, I’ll ask Siri to help me out.

 

[Sunset]

We have a landline, something the spammers can call 15 times per day

Recently I've thought I need to convince DW to port it to a cell phone. We do use it super rarely to send faxes a few times a year.
Doesn't seem worth the $250/yr cost, which is cheap for a landline.

I have an Obihai connected to google voice, and find it great , free calls in North America, and it costs me $0.00 per year.

The nice thing about porting the house number to a cell phone is you can take it with you on vacation, instead of coming home to a ton of messages.
Also, with cell phones, there are spammer filters that work well.

 

[Montecfo]

Who would you need to call?

If there’s no power outage, then you might still have internet and you can use wifi calling. And if things are bad, then odds are you won’t get through to whoever you want to call.

I guess this is one of those things I don’t worry about.

I think Chuckanut’s case is more likely, but if that happens to me, I’ll ask Siri to help me out.

Who do you ever want to call?

police
power co
family members
friends or neighbors

Having another way to call just gives you options.

Now I will say it is less valuable given wifi calling. That creates some redundancy just with cell phone.

And of course internet phone is less valuable than copper central office phone line.

 

[Doribe]

I ported the old landline number to google voice and only have a cellphone, probably around 10 years ago. No regrets.

+1

 

[Doribe]

We have a landline, something the spammers can call 15 times per day

Recently I've thought I need to convince DW to port it to a cell phone. We do use it super rarely to send faxes a few times a year.
Doesn't seem worth the $250/yr cost, which is cheap for a landline.

I have an Obihai connected to google voice, and find it great , free calls in North America, and it costs me $0.00 per year.

The nice thing about porting the house number to a cell phone is you can take it with you on vacation, instead of coming home to a ton of messages.
Also, with cell phones, there are spammer filters that work well.

I have Google Voice and the calls are forwarded to my email so I can return any calls.

 

[Markola]

I tried Ooma this summer but started getting flooded with spam on day one, and people told me the sound quality was terrible, so I went back to 100% cell coverage.

 

[tulak]

Who do you ever want to call?

police
power co
family members
friends or neighbors

Having another way to call just gives you options.

Now I will say it is less valuable given wifi calling. That creates some redundancy just with cell phone.

And of course internet phone is less valuable than copper central office phone line.

I guess it’s something that I don’t worry about.

I don’t use a phone often and if it’s not available for a bit, then no big deal. If it’s only a cellphone tower that is out, then I can wait it out. I’d look for wifi and send emails to family/friends. I suspect you can also report outages, etc, over the internet if needed. I think the odds of this happening are low and I’m skeptical a landline would be much help.

 

[target2019]

We have had several power failures in recent years. Most recently our area got a big rainfall (7.8 inches in a day) and the power company equipment was stress tested. When this happened our Ooma was not functional (wifi needs power). Meanwhile our iPhones were our communication sources and data sources.

The Ooma was there to keep our old "home phone" number and for redundancy. But if it is not useful when the power goes down due to bad weather or fires, why keep it around?

Any thoughts on other redundancy schemes? We could port the "home phone" number to some cheaper cellular phone like Tracfone that uses Verizon (I think) since our current iPhones are on Tmobile. But we had to go with the whitelist capability on Ooma due to, I suppose, the ancient phone number being on scammers lists. I don't know if something like Tracfone would give us the screening capability we want.

So maybe just go with what so many people are doing and rely on our iPhones with Tmobile? We would just dump the old phone number and Ooma. Thoughts?

I ported the old land line number to Tracfone for a few years. The cost was about $100 per year. You'll need to download an app or two to deal with the spam. After a few years we let go of the number and the cost. With two cell phones that's plenty of redundancy.

We also have a Google Voice number that forwards to my cell number. I also can make outgoing calls through our Google Mini's. It is very rare to get a spam call, and even so it just shows as an email. Google has solved the spam problem IMO. On my pixel phone the Android OS catches and flags spam that Verizon seems to miss. My wife's iPhone on same Varizon plan does get a lot of spam calls.

 

[ExPatKiwi]

We have had several power failures in recent years. Most recently our area got a big rainfall (7.8 inches in a day) and the power company equipment was stress tested. When this happened our Ooma was not functional (wifi needs power). Meanwhile our iPhones were our communication sources and data sources.

The Ooma was there to keep our old "home phone" number and for redundancy. But if it is not useful when the power goes down due to bad weather or fires, why keep it around?

Any thoughts on other redundancy schemes? We could port the "home phone" number to some cheaper cellular phone like Tracfone that uses Verizon (I think) since our current iPhones are on Tmobile. But we had to go with the whitelist capability on Ooma due to, I suppose, the ancient phone number being on scammers lists. I don't know if something like Tracfone would give us the screening capability we want.

So maybe just go with what so many people are doing and rely on our iPhones with Tmobile? We would just dump the old phone number and Ooma. Thoughts?

I use an ObIhai 200 and Google Voice (GV) number for my "free" landline (I don't pay any monthly 911 fee or tax, just make sure that you setup your GV number with your street address). My Modem/WiFi router and Obihai are both hooked up to my UPS so I have at least 2hrs of WiFi and landline use before the UPS battery goes flat. Also the GV number can be setup to ring on your cell phone at the same time so basically makes your GV landline number totally portable.



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[Time2]

We held on to our Landline for a few years after getting cellphones, and then saw it got very little use, we dumped it and never missed it.

 

[Lsbcal]

I tried Ooma this summer but started getting flooded with spam on day one, and people told me the sound quality was terrible, so I went back to 100% cell coverage.

You would need to go to the Ooma Premier $16/mo and use the white list feature. We are pretty much free of spam calls with that. But for the reasons above I don't see the need over cell phones. As mentioned by others, cell carriers such as TMobile do a good job of filtering spam calls nowadays.

 

[Chuckanut]

Google voice transcribes the message and sends me an email. Same for texts.

I checked my settings I don’t filter for spam. I never answer this line - or my cell unless I know the caller - so everything goes to voice mail/email. I find that for spam calls I only get ‘missed call’ notifications in email with no message. I delete these emails. I don’t get that many, so it’s not a big deal and this is a number that I use everywhere.

So to answer your question, it hasn’t been a chore for me. I haven’t really paid attention, but now that you mention, I’ll probably start noticing it. If it happens often, then I’ll enable the spam protection option and see if that helps.

Google voice used to forward texts to a phone that could handle texts. That was very nice. Alas, it no longer does. Apparently, their method of forwarding texts conflicts with some of the anti-spam tactics of the major cell phone carriers. So getting the texts via email is the only option as far as I can see.