My house is a dead zone for cell service. We have WiFi calling but it sometimes cuts out. But we have great internet. Wife said we need a land line of some sort for people to get ahold of us . Cable carrier wants like $20 a month extra.. Ooma is supposed to be free + taxes. Anyone use it? I don’t need to port a number.
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Ooma Telo
- Thread starter matt167
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I did magicjack it was meh for quality, echos, down some etc. Then got an obi and did it with Google voice, free then, connections would drop, would need resets etc .
Use call centric now, $3.90 a month with the Obi as the gateway. No issues, always works for several years. You get what you pay for. Find a voip gateway, use a decent provider. Remember you'll pay for 911 service if you want it even with the free ones, because it isn't included so you have to pay a separate service.
Use call centric now, $3.90 a month with the Obi as the gateway. No issues, always works for several years. You get what you pay for. Find a voip gateway, use a decent provider. Remember you'll pay for 911 service if you want it even with the free ones, because it isn't included so you have to pay a separate service.
the way it looks to me, is taxes and fees would be about $6.50 for my area. Call centric looks like it’s free plus fees and the mins you use… how much per minute do you pay if you do it like that? I don’t know how many minutes we would use except probably not that many. Under an hour per month for sure
I use voip.ms for my landline, it's like $1/month for the number, $0.01/minute for calls (in and out), and $1.50/month for e911. Works really well, except for once when they were getting DDoSed for like a week, but they were communicative and got workarounds in place relatively quickly.
They have a 'unlimited' calling plan too, but we barely make calls, so I don't remember how much that costs.
You'll need to get your own hardware, but they have setup guides for mostly everything. I mostly like the grandstream devices, but they don't work with my rotary phone; even the ones that say they will; they do need to be rebooted every once in a while because they can get stuck where they aren't connected but report that they are.
They have a 'unlimited' calling plan too, but we barely make calls, so I don't remember how much that costs.
You'll need to get your own hardware, but they have setup guides for mostly everything. I mostly like the grandstream devices, but they don't work with my rotary phone; even the ones that say they will; they do need to be rebooted every once in a while because they can get stuck where they aren't connected but report that they are.
T4rd
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I would try Google Voice first since it's free. I use it all the time to call back to the states (I live overseas) and the only time it cuts out is when transitioning from wifi to cellular or visa versa.
Everything is VoIP now, including your cable's phone service, so no point in paying extra for it if you don't have to. So just find the cheapest VoIP solution you can until you find one that's reliable enough for you.
Everything is VoIP now, including your cable's phone service, so no point in paying extra for it if you don't have to. So just find the cheapest VoIP solution you can until you find one that's reliable enough for you.
Google Voice ended access for home VOIP. Obitalk was the only gateway you could connect and that was ended 2 years ago. You can still forward a GV number to another number, but in the OP's place that doesn't do much good with limited cell signal and wifi calling being hit or miss.
And GV at home wasn't free, in a way either. No 911 service with GV, so you had to pay another service to get 911 coverage. When I had GV I was still paying about $2/month for 911.
Cable phone service is definitely VoIP, but you can get non voip phone service from a traditional telco still, if you really want. It's likely to cost an arm and a leg though. I got a line for my MIL recently and it'a $60/month. But I'm hoping it's reliable when we have our frequent power outages.
I've been using Ooma as a primary home phone line for about 10 years now. Works great and its device will plug into your existing wiring and all your "classic" phones should work.
The free plus "taxes" has crept up from about $4 per month to $7 over the past decade.
The free plus "taxes" has crept up from about $4 per month to $7 over the past decade.
T4rd
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Yeah, I'm just talking about using the app. I assume the spotty WiFi calling is due to the service itself and not his internet connection. Because I've had connection issues between different voip calling apps/services on my own network and cellular. Like WhatsApp has always been complete garbage for me. But Google Voice and Meet have been fine.
I didn't consider e911 though. That's def a concern.