Source: www.voip-news.com

It was just months ago that people were speculating that Ooma was in trouble — and on its way out. But now Ooma is getting new features.

Ooma estimates that households can save $400-$600 per year.

The new features include virtual phone numbers (users can have up to nine), voicemail attachments, mobile integration with multi-ring, personal number and voicemail, and call logs, personal and community blacklist.

“We are excited to unveil new, system-wide updates that continue to expand on the ooma promise of providing a better way to experience home telephone service,” said Andrew Frame, ooma Chief Executive Officer. “The new ooma phone system offers consumers expanded calling capabilities and conveniences that cannot be matched by traditional telephone and VoIP providers at an unrivaled cost savings. Consumers that are thinking about ways to eliminate unnecessary and costly monthly telephone bills should consider switching to ooma”.

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

Thomas "Mr. Mashup" bids a fond farewell to VON….with a tear and heavy sigh.

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

The other day Jonathan Greene posted about the lousy performance when it came to Broadband that he had at the Hotel Monaco in Seattle. The Monaco, like the Palomar here in San Francisco where I am for the week are both Kimpton Hotels and have a long tradition of catering to technology types on the road.

In the past I’ve always had a better than average experience at the Kimpton Hotel properties when it comes to broadband, but today, on the eve of Java One, my experience is nothing less than disappointing.

First I couldn’t log on, as the auto sign on said I wasn’t the guest in the room I was listing (wrong) and then it went on to say there wasn’t a credit card on file (wrong again as I already had checked in.) That required a call to support from ElevenWireless, the company which handles the connectivity.

After I was on, I realized the support person didn’t give me the service I was trying to activate, the more expensive ($4.95 vs. Free) service that promises higher speeds and better throughput vs. the free service.

Here’s what I found out:

Free service gave me 300 k down, and 150 k up. That’s not really broadband.

The paid service is giving me between 330k and 500k down and between 150 and 500 k up over a series of tests.

As JG says, "sorry. This isn’t broadband."

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

Om reports that OOMA is not dead yet and has hired a new Chief Marketing Officer.

What I love is the comment from Om about PhoneGnome, a company which I helped launch and remain an advisor to.

The continual comparisons, rightly so speak to the smarts and insight that TelEvolution founder, and PhoneGnome creator David (Mr. Blog) Beckemeyer has when it comes to the Voice over IP market.

PhoneGnome was developed for far less, cost less to produce and has likely sold more with a significantly smaller marketing and PR spend.

Beyond that, what’s interesting is it sounds like OOMA is going away from their "Hollywood" star spokesperson approach, and starting to realize that its a retail game. Now lets see how much hey have to pay to the retailers to get onto the big box store floor. Given how every VoIP company from Vonage, to Earthlink’s TruVoice to AT&T’s CallVantage has paid the retail piper, and not really seen heavy return that makes them a profit, a retail play seems like someone has an uphill battle.

Source: www.voip-news.com

Ooma is huge news around the blogosphere this week. First, Valleywag (think National Enquirer meets DrudgeReport) dishes about speculation that the company is failing … in an aptly tagged piece — Deathwatch. The blogosphere has caught on quickly and the rumor is flying like hot fire. What do you think? Is Ooma a goner?

In less grave news, the Voip Weblog is talking about technology that could help you have a phone call without speaking . . . all you’d need to do is think that you want to say. K, it’s April and I figured I might have missed this on, oh, the first . . . but nope, this is for real. Kinda eerie, no?

And just when I thought I had seen enough for the day . . . Human VoIP shows a new product that could bring smell-o-vision to life.  Ew.

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

We are more and more mobile. Even with the cost of fuel and travel, people are on the go and laptops make it possible for us to work more, and in more places. Judi Sohn brings up a very interesting, and frustrating point today on Mom@Home about SalesForce.com’s IP checking routine.

This clearly shows a total lack of understanding by SalesForce.com’s IT Security group on where the market is going, but also shows how much clout IT-Security has over a company’s product development. I’ve heard similar horror stories from banks, online company execs at Yahoo and elsewhere. Basically "security" is the magic word for "let’s not make any changes." Unfortunately, change is upon us, and as people work more from home, in coffee shops and from hotels. They pose challenges to the IP Security teams at most companies, and because its easier to say "no" than to go figure out a workable solution, the end user, ala Judy, unfairly suffers.

I can relate to her plight. When I was on my honeymoon in Valencia Spain I made a point of still paying my team members at Comunicano. Unfortunately I made the mistake of using a VPN that made me appear to be logged in from the USA on one session earlier in the day when I used the bill pay service to get around some NAT/Firewall issues that were preventing the use of my RSA key, and didn’t use the VPN when I was in my hotel room. The result was devastating. My bank online access was barred and my online accounts were all deleted/suspended by the bank.

What’s more I spent over two hours trying to get someone with a lick of authority on the line, missed dinner that had been planned for weeks as no one would explain (or confirm) what I suspected happened. A few days later, thanks to intervention by my banker, I got the director of the division who had signed off on the policy and explained the situation. What was ironic was I had notified the bank I would be out of the USA and told them specifically where I would be and on which days. Unfortunately, that only seemed to apply to my ATM/Credit Card, and it was revealed to me that the online and ATM departments don’t talk to one another. Or didn’t. Now they do.

Judi’s subtle points are well thought out. She’s nailed the message that we’re in a changing IT consumed world and the practices are not keeping up with the market. That means more marketing driven thinking and less IT driven requirements have to start finding their way into new products and services, otherwise the cost to deploy new technologies, which should save us more, will cost us all more.

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

At First I thought it was Oma, meaning Grand Mother in Dutch! But it sounds the same if I am pronouncing it right.
So the Silicon Valley start up is coming out with VoIP service that offers a fancy gateway that is called a HUB and an extension called Ooma Scout. My Grand ma was a Girl Scout!
Anyway the Ooma has a unique approach. You pay in the form of purchasing the devices the HUB and the SCOUT and you get all local calls free. will also offer a free second line, conference calling, voice mail service and an online "lounge" where users may change their preferences or get voice mail in an e-mail format. More I investigate, hub is a Voip(broadband)/PSTN gateway with voice mail and some more bells and whistles added.
The Hub is said to be $399.00 and the company will start selling the devices Thursday with an invitation-only offer to select U.S. residents. I think it has to be by invitation because, a few will part with $400 after SunRocket took off with all those prepaid $199 a year accounts! and without recourse. It is not clear about the hub and the codecs and protocols it uses. Are the proprietary? Or are they compatible with any VoIP server like SER or Asterisk? If the answer is no to the latter, my $400 will stay in my pocket. I have too many VoIP gateways that I don’t use.(Can’t use!).

"It’s nothing like anything a carrier can do currently," CEO Andrew Frame said. "Once you own the box, you don’t have to pay ooma anything in the future." unless you make long distance calls.

Frame also says you have to pay again to Ooma, if you want to make long distance calls. the way they plan to make money. So far I know they offer 1 Cent per minute to Europe (Not clear if cellular calls included) and 8 cents to India. Not much different from other carriers.

So far I know very little about the technology and the methodology. But from guessing from the tid bits from various sources, one can achieve the same with Skype and some of the gateways listed at voip-info.org, consumer and enterprise versions are offered, they are much cheaper and could be used with any VoIP provider. Then there are a bunch of Skype Phones from the likes of Linksys and polycomm that cost less than $100 and plugs in to any broadband service!

The difference seem to be that Ooma will use your gateway (Hub) to terminate local calls to numbers that are not on Ooma network! We use to have such network in early 2000s when every one did not have broadband connections and wanted to make cheap VoIP calls. So we used to volunteer our phone line for greater good, until we found that software always did not find the correct termination number and called numbers beyond your free local call Zone, as pacbell used to call them! May be they have improved the technology! and a patent for improved technology?
Ooma seem to have patent-pending call-routing algorithm called "distributed termination," similar to peer-to-peer and distributed computing ideas. I would like to know how much is this different from that of Skype’s solution, which is also a distributed P2P other than hub having PSTN call capabilities.

Don’t take my word for it, follow this link to learn more about Ooma, (I could not, there is no much information) I would not call my users white rabbits, then again you can give a call to your Oma, Grandma, that you have been putting off, using any phone at hand!
I learned about it here.

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

At First I thought it was Oma, meaning Grand Mother in Dutch! But it sounds the same if I am pronouncing it right.
So the Silicon Valley start up is coming out with VoIP service that offers a fancy gateway that is called a HUB and an extension called Ooma Scout. My Grand ma was a Girl Scout!
Anyway the Ooma has a unique approach. You pay in the form of purchasing the devices the HUB and the SCOUT and you get all local calls free. will also offer a free second line, conference calling, voice mail service and an online "lounge" where users may change their preferences or get voice mail in an e-mail format. More I investigate, hub is a Voip(broadband)/PSTN gateway with voice mail and some more bells and whistles added.
The Hub is said to be $399.00 and the company will start selling the devices Thursday with an invitation-only offer to select U.S. residents. I think it has to be by invitation because, a few will part with $400 after SunRocket took off with all those prepaid $199 a year accounts! and without recourse. It is not clear about the hub and the codecs and protocols it uses. Are the proprietary? Or are they compatible with any VoIP server like SER or Asterisk? If the answer is no to the latter, my $400 will stay in my pocket. I have too many VoIP gateways that I don’t use.(Can’t use!).

"It’s nothing like anything a carrier can do currently," CEO Andrew Frame said. "Once you own the box, you don’t have to pay ooma anything in the future." unless you make long distance calls.

Frame also says you have to pay again to Ooma, if you want to make long distance calls. the way they plan to make money. So far I know they offer 1 Cent per minute to Europe (Not clear if cellular calls included) and 8 cents to India. Not much different from other carriers.

So far I know very little about the technology and the methodology. But from guessing from the tid bits from various sources, one can achieve the same with Skype and some of the gateways listed at voip-info.org, consumer and enterprise versions are offered, they are much cheaper and could be used with any VoIP provider. Then there are a bunch of Skype Phones from the likes of Linksys and polycomm that cost less than $100 and plugs in to any broadband service!

The difference seem to be that Ooma will use your gateway (Hub) to terminate local calls to numbers that are not on Ooma network! We use to have such network in early 2000s when every one did not have broadband connections and wanted to make cheap VoIP calls. So we used to volunteer our phone line for greater good, until we found that software always did not find the correct termination number and called numbers beyond your free local call Zone, as pacbell used to call them! May be they have improved the technology! and a patent for improved technology?
Ooma seem to have patent-pending call-routing algorithm called "distributed termination," similar to peer-to-peer and distributed computing ideas. I would like to know how much is this different from that of Skype’s solution, which is also a distributed P2P other than hub having PSTN call capabilities.

Don’t take my word for it, follow this link to learn more about Ooma, (I could not, there is no much information) I would not call my users white rabbits, then again you can give a call to your Oma, Grandma, that you have been putting off, using any phone at hand!
I learned about it here.