This is the second “One Year Later” review that I’ve done where I feel like a day, a week, or even a month just doesn’t do service to a review about an item(s) that should be used and critiqued over the year to find any and all problems, quirks and hopefully all of the good parts all enough time to come to the surface. Just a bit over a year ago, I purchased one of the Ooma Hub and Scout combo packages and decided I was going to test it. As with all over VoIP platforms, the Ooma Hub depends upon your internet connection. Your connection goes down, so goes your ability to use your phone.

That’s the nature of VoIP.

But just like Vonage, who I have been with for 7 years, or just like magicJack who I’ve kept for 2 years whenever I travel, and now Ooma – which I’ve kept now for slightly over a year. I tend to stick to commercial VoIP solutions because I like the support they give me. And in one year, I’ve had to contact Ooma only once for an outage last April that lasted for about 4 hours. Mind you, I don’t even make that many phone calls, but seeing that little red light just bothered me enough to send them an e-mail. They promptly responded and solved the problem in under a few hours for all users of Ooma. No problems since.

Unlike magicJack, there’s no implicit limit to how long a phone call can last. You can talk for 60, 90, 270 minutes and it will not disconnect you. The voice quality is on par, if not better than an AT&T landline. In fact, people have heard more of what was going on in my background than an AT&T landline. Sometimes, that’s not a good thing… but that’s another post

Ooma does require a hefty price for their equipment. Their newer Ooma Telo hardware just screams out über-sexy with that fingerprint magnet black plastic and smooth corners, while the older (see above) equipment would be just fine in a 1960 retro styled home alongside your childhood Han Solo blaster toy. Call me odd, but I love my older one just fine. Ooma Telo can be purchased from Amazon.com, Best Buy and other retailers starting around $199.99 to about $249.99. Good part though? There are zero monthly bills after that. But you have to hope that Ooma stays in business so you’ll still have the ability to call out and not just have a pricey piece of kit in your house.

So how does Ooma make money? Besides investments by people ranging from Ashton Kutcher, Ooma’s Creative Director, to venture capitalist that have put in as much as $18.3 million in investments just in Summer of 2009; Ooma makes money from Premier Subscribers and from pre-paid overseas phone calls. Mind you, their rates aren’t exactly the best, but I’d venture to say they’re pretty darn close. But the experience of calling overseas is hit or miss. Phone calls to Germany and Britain were flawless. Better than a cellphone in most cases. Phone calls to Japan, China and New Zealand… went badly. I had to call them again in order to be heard in most cases. And I have a 10mb digital cable connection that’s pretty solid most of the time.

Premier Subscriptions cost $9.99 a month, or $119.99 a year – up from $99.99 when I first purchased my Ooma Hub and Scout – and offers quite a few good perks: Instant Second Line™, Three-way Conferencing, Multi-Ring (the ability to ring more than one phone, like your cellphone for instance) and a rollover, Back-up Number when the internet isn’t being friendly.

For all intents and purposes, I didn’t renew my Premier subscription, despite being grand-fathered with a few other perks that are no longer part of the Premier subscriptions, I just didn’t find myself using it. I have call-waiting. I have caller ID. I can call all of the US without a problem. I have voicemail that I can check via the internet – Ooma’s web interface is actually quite decent and easy to use – or I can check directly on the machine itself. The speaker quality on the Ooma Hub is good and loud. I have e911 access that’s accurate to my house street address. And if you’re another Ooma subscriber, wherever you’re at, I can call you for free. Take the machine to China, once you’re plugged in, I can call you like it’s a free call.

To be honest, that’s all I need. I really don’t want nor need a landline, but having a second line in the house is cool to have in case somebody insists on sending a fax, which Ooma supports too.

But the bad parts about Ooma… I seriously can’t tell you how long they will be around. I’ve gotten a year, so I’ve gotten my money’s worth. They’ve secured more money, they have a presence in Best Buy and Radio Shack, as well as an online presence via Buy.com and Amazon. So I know they’re selling quite a few. Despite being extremely easy to set up, setting up the Ooma behind the router really isn’t suggested. I’ve had some quality problems and what I ended up doing was splitting from the modem to the Ooma Hub then to my wireless router. No problems sense.

Is this the telecom killer? Nope. Is it a good for everybody? No. Is it good if you can find an Ooma Telo or Ooma Hub for cheap? Heck yes. If you’re adventurous, I’d say get it – not knowing if Ooma will go all Sunrocket and instantly close shop on you is a serious fear to have. But for the last year, I’m actually impressed with my Ooma Hub. It saves me cellphone minutes per month. Heck, I have my Google Voice account hooked into my Ooma phone number… so I’ve gotten my money’s worth. But I’m hesitant to buy this for my mother, despite the Ooma Telo being sexy as all get out.

Final statement: Easy to set up, pretty kickass barebones without a Premier Subscription, but it’s just too risky to purchase if you’re not used to being on the edge. I’d call this a 3.5 out of 5 (Only If You’re Brave) – oh, and I don’t even use the Ooma Scout since I use only VoIP and not the landline functionality that Ooma supports.

[ Links: Ooma ] [ Related: magicJack "Year Later Review" ]

Over the last six months, many AT&T employees have told us they expect the telco to continue laying off a considerable number of workers in 2010. The cuts are underway in California, where local news outlet KCRA notes that AT&T is planning to lay off 525 technicians statewide by the end of March. The cuts of course are tied, in part, to AT&T continues landline losses; AT&T landline revenues last quarter fell 7.1% to $16.3 billion from $17.6 billion one year ago. In Connecticut, where the telco already has a tense relationship with CT Attorney General Richard Blumenthal over previous layoffs, the company says they’re trimming an additional 160 jobs by February 19.

Link to the original article…

“current administration’s pointed directive on transparency in government, and the public’s renewed interest in the question of legal immunity for the telecommunications companies that participated in the warrantless wiretapping program while considering currently pending legislation repealing the amendments to FISA, the Court finds that the public interest lies in favor of disclosure.”

Needless to say (though the Judge says it anyway), the Obama Administration’s refusal to hand over this documentation during Congressional discussions of domestic wiretapping flies in the face of the administration’s claims that transparency is a priority. Read comment(s)

Link to the original article…

I had gotten my first MagicJack USB VoIP device on July, 19 2007. After one small business trip, it somehow stopped working but the guys over at MagicJack replaced it without question last October. So my “one year review” truly started in October, 19 2007.

A year later, I have gone from Windows 2003 Server SP2 to Windows Vista SP1 – I know, I know… it still sucks – switched professions and cities, and I still am using the same replacement MagicJack device. I’ve even pumped in about $50 into making overseas calls while on-the-go – the rates are “competitive” to most countries… but honestly still a disappointment to some other countries compared to other VoIP options.

The good news, I just renewed for another year of phone calls within the US and Canada for some $20 USD for the entire year. The device has been updated at least 5 times using their upgrade process, only once have I had to manually update it – that was during my switch to Vista. It was quick, painless… and it seems that I was somewhat fortunate. I’ve read about some horror stories over at The Unofficial magicJack Support Forum. The unofficial site that is about one of the only sources for reliable help if you have questions since magicJack’s main website is mostly about just selling the device. You can still get assistance via their live chat at magicjack.com, but it’s only active after you use search.

The bad news. You will have to always keep a machine up and running in order to receive a phone call. For the geek type that loves to have uptime records to brag about, that’s great. For somebody like my mother that treats her computer much like a lamp… it’s off the moment she walks out of the room; that’s going to be a problem if you wish to receive a phone call via the magicJack device. This is not a standalone ATA device like you’d have with Vonage. MagicJack uses your main machine – it only works in Windows XP and Vista, as well as Intel Mac OS X – to receive a phone call. No Linux version yet.

Once you open up the blister pack, place it into an USB2 port and after a very quick and simple registration process, you will be up and running in no time. Place a regular phone into the back of the magicJack device, hit talk on the telephone and you should hear a dialtone; dial all 10 digits of whomever you’re calling in the US/Canada… and you’re golden. I think even my own mother could set this up without even calling me once.

Along with a my.magicjack.com account that will mirror your e-mail and password that you input earlier, the system will prompt you to how to get into your voicemail within the actual phone application itself. You can use either a headset and microphone or use the aforementioned connected telephone. While traveling, I’ve actually hijacked the telephone in the hotel room and plugged it into the magicJack device instead of carrying around another telephone with me or even a headset for that matter. But if I were to use the device at a coffee shop, I’d probably switch to a headset to avoid whipping out a big telephone and looking crazy.

Then again, I might just eBay an old rotary phone for the heck of it now.

If you have good broadband access – my cable modem is rated at 3mb/s down, 1mb/s up normally – your voice clarity will be as good as a cellphone, if not better. I’ve had compliments from people when I call them using magicJack. But as with anything that’s bandwidth dependent, if you get busy downloading things, or use something that likes to hog the bandwidth, like Skype or bit torrents, your voice quality will suffer. Google around and turn off Skype’s supernode if you insist on using that program.

Using the thing now is like second nature. I walk in, grab a phone, dial a number, the software window pops up – it autoruns on windows start, and will pop up each and every time you minimize it, then use the telephone. There are ways to remove this nature as well. I’ve found some good tutorials on how to do so over at the Unofficial MagicJack Forum. But to be honest… it just works.

Sure, there’s been a few times it failed – I might have dialed too fast, missed a number, or the software didn’t register a few numbers I dialed. I tend to dial quite fast, so it happens quite a bit. But the speed dial numbers work every time. Perhaps I’m a clumsy dialer. It rings just like a regular phone, if you leave a message, they see the number – but not the proper name, it just says whichever city you got your number from usually. And speaking of numbers, magicJack has quite a list of area codes and numbers. Not all areas are covered – my part of South Carolina is not covered at all – but since most cellphones have the ability to call long distance now, or in my case I use a Grandcentral number for local numbers – that’s really not an issue. And if you call overseas, you will hear before it attempts to connect you an approximate amount of minutes announced before it dials out. To me, that’s a plus.

With how to use it and how it sounds out of the way, my gripes are very simple. I don’t like the fact that I have to keep my machine running, always. The machine my magicJack device is hooked up to… it’s loud. Like Boeing 777 about to take off loud. In order to make phone calls overseas, you have to pre-pay. Which isn’t a problem, but they don’t accept Paypal. And that… annoys me somewhat. Being a windows process control freak, I do not like the fact that it installs an USB driver that’s always started up – UTSCSI.exe. And for some reason, on my machine, magicJack doesn’t always autostart; which is resolved by merely double clicking the magicJack icon. Nothing major, but it’s a gripe if I were in a rush and thought it was already running.

There are a few other minor gripes; however it just works fine for me – but I’m a casual telephone user. For a month, I had my own mother try it out. She’d get confused sometimes, miss calls and the VMail button wouldn’t announce that there was an voicemail waiting for her (they’ve since fixed this, btw) and not all of her messages came to her directly via e-mail. Some were delayed by a day or so.

This device is also not ready to replace my normal landline. True, it has e911 which works rather well – ask Vonage, it’s the same type of system. But some numbers, such as AT&T 800 numbers just refuse to work. You get some unnaturally fast busy sound. I’ve also noticed problems with toll-free numbers that start with 866 or 877 also being a problem as well. And outages aren’t that rare either.

But when it works… it’s great.

By now, I’ve rambled long enough. Is it for you? I’d say that depends… are you a casual telephone user, do you slaughter your cellphone minutes like I tend to do? Or do you just want to drop a landline and have a cheap secondary line besides your cellphone? I’d say go for it. If you want to replace your landline… I’d say try it out first. If you want to make this your sole telephone line… I’d just honestly say “Don’t do it and wait for another option.”…

All in all… 3.5 out of 5 (It’s good)