VoIP goes Hollywood
What do Ashton Kutcher and voice over IP technology have in common?
Kutcher, best known for his role on That '70s Show and MTV's reality show Punk'd, is "creative director" for a Silicon Valley start-up called Ooma, which has developed a device that will allow users to make free VoIP calls to any phone in the U.S.
The company, which has $27 million in funding, officially announced itself Thursday.
Unlike Vonage, which requires users pay a monthly flat rate for domestic calling, or Skype, which charges users a low-cost fee to make or accept calls from regular phones, Ooma charges a one-time fee of $399 for the Ooma device. After that, all domestic local and long distance calling is free.
Exactly what Kutcher knows about Internet telephony or the communications market in general is a mystery to me. But apparently, the actor/husband of Demi Moore helped design the company's logo and the viral marketing campaign called "White Rabbit," which the company will launch this fall. As part of the campaign, Ooma will give away roughly 2,000 Ooma boxes to participants, who will then be able to invite three friends to also get a free Ooma box in exchange for deploying the box and trying the service.
The viral campaign is designed to create buzz for the product, but it's also necessary in order to ensure the service actually works. Ooma relies on a peer-to-peer network, much like the PC-to-PC calling service available through Skype. And it needs to seed the market with devices.
Through this model calls are connected directly to customers rather than through a central server owned and operated by a service provider. Ooma uses this peer-to-peer network to avoid paying phone companies for terminating calls when Ooma users make long distance calls to non-Ooma users. So if I'm an Ooma user in New York City, and I call my dad in Delaware, who is not an Ooma user, the Ooma network will find an Ooma user in my dad's local calling area and mooch off that stranger's local phone line to complete the phone call between my dad and me.
Andrew Frame, CEO of the company, claims that with strategically placed Ooma devices, the company can cover 95 percent of the population. (Of course, this also requires that most Ooma users also keep their regular phone lines so that calls can connect to the public switched telephone network.) And for regions where there is no Ooma box, Frame said the company will eat the cost of interconnecting to the local telephone network.
I have to admit I'm skeptical that Ooma will actually get enough people to buy one of these devices, which looks like an answering machine. The $399 price tag is not trivial, especially when you consider that Ooma may not be around very long. Several other pure play VoIP providers are struggling to stay afloat. Earlier this week, SunRocket closed its doors, leaving some 200,000 subscribers in the lurch. And Vonage, saddled with a huge headache of a lawsuit from Verizon, is also bleeding subscribers.
The service also has a few catches. For one, international calling is not free. Frame said the rates will be similar to other VoIP services like Skype or Vonage. What's more, the Ooma box provides one jack per phone. If users want to hook up additional phones, they'll have to buy a separate adapter called a Scout for each phone at a cost of $39 a pop.
And the final catch is that, like many other VoIP offerings, Ooma doesn't fully comply with enhanced 911, which means if you want the fire department or ambulance driver to actually find your house when you call 911 then you'd better keep your $20 a month regular phone line.
I'm sure some users will find the Ooma device economical and very useful. But I doubt it will take the telephony world by storm. Of course that could change, if a phone company like AT&T or Verizon were to buy Ooma or partner with the company to deploy the device in their traditional telephony markets. But if history is any indication, I don't see the stodgy U.S. operators touching Ooma with a 10-foot pole.
Marguerite Reardon has been a CNET News reporter since 2004, covering cell phone services, broadband, citywide Wi-Fi, the Net neutrality debate, as well as the ongoing consolidation of the phone companies. E-mail Maggie. 
Isn't that kind of like a really big violation of your agreement with your phone provider to allow 3rd parties to use your line for commercial purposes?
Take a look at who's going out of business and who's stock is near 0 in the telephone business... it's all VoIP providers who ship hardware and want to charge big fees.
Sigh.... Dude.
ideas, above and beyond illegally sharing media content, and I
think this device will be yet another finger nail in the climb toward
the true demonopolization of the bells. I think it will become
another casualty in that cause, but not a meaningless one. It's an
important symbolic indicator of consumer's efforts to take control
of what we've already paid for many times over.
my phone company to maintain my POTS line.
But there's a major flaw.
First as you and the author point out, you need to keep your POTS line.
The second... local phone tariffs and your individual phone plan.
Depending on the city/state that you live in, some "local" calls aren't really local. Meaning you can get toll charges depending on the distance from your location, even if you're in the same area code.
So for example, if I live in the downtown loop area of Chicago, and I call a friend who lives out on the edge of the 312 area code by the airport. I may incur a cost per call instead of a flat rate.
same idea as this one a few years back, but can't
overcome this particular problem.
With the voip provider that I use, you don?t have to worry about the area code, so long as you are calling within the United States or Canada.
Indeed I have never been so comfortable making calls within the above named locations (I mean without any additional charges). It?s an evolution that has come to stay even though some voip providers are today out of business, will still not change the popularity of the service.
I have now been using voip for close to four months and enjoy the unlimited calling feature most and many others like: Keep your old phone number, Choose Your Area Code, Caller ID with Name, Caller ID Blocking, Call Forwarding, Three-Way Calling, Do Not Disturb, Anonymous Call Blocking, Follow Me, Find Me etc.
To me switching to voip is a good thought, especially if you are thinking of ever using voip, because it does not only save you money but you could spare yourself the Borden of writing checks month after month by simply chosen the Yearly plan ($199). In addition, their international rates are very moderate.
Check Packet8 by copying and pasting the below link into your internet browser, if you think voip could be a choice for you. They provide good services and a Thirty-day Money-back Guarantee.
http://www.telebay.com/callvoip/packet8.html
Skype charges $30 a year for unlimited call to the U.S. and Canada. Given Ooma's $400 cost, I can buy 13 YEARS worth of Skpye service. Oh, and I can use my $30 Skype account on any computer, unlike Ooma which requires me to shell out $400 for every location. Try using Ooma from your hotel room. Good luck on that! An airport? Video calling? For $400 you can't do video calling, but you can do it for free with Skype, Yahoo Chat, Live, etc.
The only thing that will save Ooma is a big fat government no-bid contract. Ooma, FEMA is calling on line 1.
http://www.voip-catalog.com/
- by nurok8 July 13, 2009 5:28 AM PDT
- Do you want to call cheap? You can make free calls to other computers connected to the Internet. Cheap international calls. Catalogue of <a href="http://www.voip-catalog.com/">voip providers</a>.
- Reply to this comment
-
(12 Comments)http://www.voip-catalog.com/