ooma three months later…

A quick update on our switch to the VOIP “ooma” system:  invest $189 in the system, and never get a phone bill again.  We made the switch in early September.

I’d like to report that our switch from a conventional land line to ooma has been a resounding success, and that the system has far exceeded our expectations.  That’s what I’d like to do.  But I can’t.

By and large, the system has worked well.  Installation took 15 minutes, we receive calls, we make calls, we don’t get a phone bill.  But… we’ve had one recurring problem, and as fate would have it, it’s only affected my wife.  In my mind, the system’s great.  She is not entirely pleased.

A reminder:  we live in south central Nebraska, which is another way of saying that we live in the middle of nowhere. Literally. We’re 1700 miles from San Francisco,1700 miles from Boston, and about 5 hours from any form of civilization. (No, the blog is not popular here in town.)  When I went to get an ooma phone number, I discovered that my old number couldn’t be ported to a new number, and no ooma numbers for our town were available.  We ended up getting a number with an exchange for a town about 45 miles away.  As a result, in some cases, people calling us locally from a land line have to make a long distance call.

That’s not the worst of it.  Pat has two friends who live about a mile away.  They have land lines.  In brief, they have a hell of a time trying to call us. They lose the signal, there’s a delay, they can’t get through, they get through and the voice quality is horrible, calls get dropped… you get the picture.  “I hate this (insert your favorite expletive here) phone!” is a familiar refrain.

Me?  I call all over the country and have no issues. I direct dial my office (about 5 miles away) and have no problem.  I direct dial local businesses, no problem.  I call companies’ 800 numbers and get into their automated systems, enter PINs and the like, no issues.  I called Frontier last night to inquire about a refund of the credit left on our account, and the connection was great. What’s not to like?  Her two friends try to connect with her, and it’s as though they’re trying to connect with Amelia Earhart using tin cans and a piece of string. While underwater. Go figure.

So… it’s not quite an unqualified success.  I’ve fiddled with the settings a bit, but am pretty much at a loss to explain why we can speak to our son in DC and the connection and voice clarity are tremendous, but when someone 20 blocks away tries to call on a land line, it’s seemingly impossible to have a good connection.  This makes no sense to me.

I’ve posed the question on the ooma Forum and gotten a bit of help, but we haven’t had any breakthroughs yet.

You may be wondering, “Why don’t her friends just call with their cell phones?”  They do this on occasion, and that works ok.  “Why doesn’t Pat use her cell phone?”  Two reasons:  she’s one of those people who does NOT have her cell phone on 24/7; in fact, it’s rarely on.  More importantly, she’s on a very basic T-Mobile plan and she could easily use up her minutes, after which it quickly gets expensive.

So… would we go back to a land line?  No.  Would my wife?  I just asked her, and she said “No.”  I asked her to rate ooma on a scale of 1-10, and she said “6.”  (Not as bad as I’d anticipated!)

I hope I can get the issue with her local friends ironed out.  Personally, I’m thrilled to have gotten rid of the land line.  It makes no sense to give someone $600+ a year for outdated technology.  If I had young kids at home and was concerned about having 911 service, perhaps I’d feel different.  For now, I’m happy we made the change; I’d frankly be happier if Mrs. Hacks was totally satisfied.  I’ll provide another update in another 3 months or so.

Check out ooma here:  ooma – Free Home Phone Service