I have been a VOIP customer through Lingo for about a year. I have been more than satisfied with the service with Lingo, but saw ooma as a way to save even more money. Frankly, I had phone service through my cable company for many, many years, and the only reason I switched to VOIP was because I wanted to add Caller ID, but couldn't stand the thought of paying $8/month.

Like Lingo, it didn't take me very long to get ooma up and running, and I have done what many others have done by plugging the telephone cord from one of my wall outlets directly to the phone input on the ooma hub. This allows any phone in my home which is plugged into my home wiring to be active, just like with a traditional phone service. Just remember to unplug the phone line at the junction box which comes into your home. Since I am not interested in having another phone line, this configuration allows me not to use the ooma Scout, which will probably be going up on eBay.

If what you seek is basic phone service with Caller ID and voice mail, it's hard to go wrong with ooma. Frankly, depending on your current phone bill (probably between $25-60/month), ooma doesn't have to last very long before you re-coup your investment. Give it a shot!

By the way, on the two times I called customer service, I had to wait about 10 minutes to get through to someone. While I certainly would have preferred a shorter wait, it didn't seem completely unreasonable as others have suggested. The first time I called, it was to shut off the "viral dialtone" which appears when someone answers your call. I found it very annoying and distracting, so I was very happy that I could have it removed.

Is AMAZING! It keeps every promise. The clarity! Let's just talk about the clarity. I was very skeptical, but it really, truly is AMAZING. Easy to set up and worth every penny. One thing to keep in mind: the porting takes a long time - figure about a month.

I was just about ready to pull the trigger to buy the ooma system based on the excellent reviews that I've read from other customers. I've been using Vonage for a few years and was considering replacing with with ooma to save even more money. But, I discovered that one KEY feature that Vonage has is not available with ooma.

Vonage lets you establish a backup phone number in case the internet connection and/or power is out of commission to your house. In my case, I established my cell phone number as a backup. So, when my internet connection is down or my power is out, when someone dials my home phone number, the call is transferred transparently to the backup cell phone. With ooma, the user's manual simply states, no internet or no power means no ooma. What happens to any phone calls made to your number? The manual doesn't tell you.

Unless you have 100% uptime on your internet connection and you never have phone outages, you may want to think twice about having an ooma system take over as your primary/exclusive home phone number.

After doing quite a bit of research on what other options were available, I decided on going with Ooma because the price and features were just much better than what is out there. 1 year later, I am still very happy with my decision. Quite frankly, I don't agree with any of the negative reviews. One thing that Ooma fails to mention, is how you will be asked by many of your friends what that slick looking device next to your cable modem is. It really does look cool, kind of like the way Apple stuff tends to stand out.

"When the business plan doesn't work and Ooma's Ponzi scheme (selling hardware brings in the monehy to operate the free calling - when the sales of hardware slows down, when they are forced to pay fines for their lies) breaks - a lot of people will be left holding worthless useless equipment that provides zero service......"
^^^^^^
AMEN!!