Obihai vs Ooma

[wurm]

In yesterday's mail we received notice that by the end of March our T-Mo@Home is going to stop. If we want, it will be replaced (free of charge) by their Linelink. This may be the incentive we need to totally drop our pseudo "landline". We've been debating it anyway. The @Home service was $5/mo (+taxes) and the Linelink will be $10/mo. plus taxes. Certainly not worth it since the only people who ever call on our home phone is telemarketers. That said........

If we decided we wanted to keep a non-cell phone way of communicating from home, it seems the best options would be an Obihai box or an Ooma. Any clear distinction as to what would be better for a simple but rarely used "home" phone setup? I would want to keep our existing number and I don't necessarily want to route it through Google Voice.

Thanks for your thoughts.

[pqrst]

I added a Obihai box (the low end 200) and tied it to my Gvoice number into my slowish time warner cable modem. It has been consistently high quality audio. Better then my iPhone 5. (Probably related to the better phone instrument microphone). Not had a problem. It is rock solid in terms and reliability. Takes about 3 minutes to reestablish a dial tone from power on and there is no fiddling with settings if the power goes down on power up. This is line that I use maybe once a month and is more to have a landline in the house if I have house guests.
Hope this helps.

[space-time]

I love OOMA but then I am grandfathered in that old plan with zero taxes and fees. If I were to start fresh I would probably try Obihai which gets good reviews from our very verbose Robert M and seems to have no fees or taxes as far as I recall from his extensive reviews.

[MrNoBody]

Obihai + Google Voice, no brainer as long as you don't need 'dedicated' 9-1-1.

1 time payment of $30-50 for the Obi. That's it, no fees or taxes.

[John B.]

Agree with the Obihai + Google Voice if Google Voice provides the service you need.

[Fritz]

We have 2 Ooma lines off the FiOS. No complaints.

[tronnei]

I did Obihai and paired it with PhonePower for $60 a year. PhonePower gave me 911 registration, caller ID, call blocking and an iPhone app. Service has been great and voice quality is just as good as traditional landline. No regrets.

[Speedy]

Besides the cost of the Ooma, you are going to pay ~$5/month in taxes. We like our Ooma and live with the $5.

[Robert M]

Wurm,

Search the forum for my posts about Obihai boxes and Google Voice. I moved to the combination 1.5 years afgo and it's been rock solid. And, despite what MrNoBody says, e911 is available via a 3rd party company. You have to pay a small fee for it. A Google Voice number combined with an Obihai box can also serve as a fax line. No problems at all.

Obihai boxes go on sale pretty regularly. If you're going to get one, I recommend the Obi202. It costs a little more but offers more bang for the buck, i.e. support for 2 lines, QoS, etc. Our Obihai Obi202 has my google voice line and my wife's google voice line. I use my line for regular calls. Her google voice line is used for faxing, which comes in handy surprisingly often.

You don't need special phones to use Google Voice with an Obihai box. Just a plain ol' phone will do. My Panasonic cordless phone system is dandy with it. The Google Voice line rings on the Panisonic phones and it's configured to ring on my cell phone simultaneously. I can pick up calls on either the Pansonic phones or my cell phone., whichever is more convenient.

I don't subscribe to the e911 service. Not necessary for my purposes.

If you decide to go with Google Voice, you'll need to transfer your number to a cell phone provider and, in turn, move it to Google Voice. I did it with an AT&T GoPhone configuration. Search the forum for details.

So far, I'm very happy with the combination. Definitely a solid choice for home phone service. My wife was a little leery and decided to move from Vonage to Ooma. Again, no problems. She went to Ooma because of price and features. Ooma offer similar pricing and better features for the money.

If we had to do it again, I'd probably move her regular number to Google Voice (in addition to her existing Google Voice number) and an Obihai box. Since mine has both ports in use, we'd get another and it'd be the Obi202.

Robert

[wurm]

Thanks for all the replies. The totally free aspect is the one thing in Obihai's favor, although I guess it would mean setting it up with Google Voice to get that.

Frankly, the only downside I see to dropping the line altogether is on those rare occasions when we might have to call some customer support number and be on hold for an hour. I can't afford to chew up my mobile minutes that way. Then again, I could do as I've been doing and just call from work.