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OBi and Ooma

Started by moosbrth, December 23, 2011, 09:57:57 AM

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moosbrth

I see on Amazon, people buy Ooma with an OBi, usually a 110.

I have an Ooma hub now, what is the use and or advantage of using an OBi with an Ooma? The Ooma seems pretty complete, what does the OBi add to the mix?

Thanks, John

Stewart

Quote from: moosbrth on December 23, 2011, 09:57:57 AMThe Ooma seems pretty complete, what does the OBi add to the mix?
Ooma is complete???  Without premier, Ooma is IMO little more than a POTS replacement; you'd use the OBi for really basic stuff like being able to make and receive calls while your wife is on the line, as well as a less-expensive substitute for the other Premier features.

With Premier, Ooma still lacks in many areas.  For starters, their international rates suck.  While you could of course use a calling-card service with Ooma, that requires two- or three-stage dialing and degrades quality.

Even with Premier, you don't get basic features such as call transfer.  Say, you answer an important call for your wife, but she's out.  With most services, you'd just transfer it to her cell phone; Ooma requires you to do a three-way and stay on the line.  Or, you might want to transfer a call to your own cell, so you can continue the conversation while walking the dog.

Ooma doesn't interoperate with many useful services such as SIPBroker, iNum, and providers with access numbers in many countries.  If you need a special feature that Ooma doesn't offer, you can add on a provider that does, accessed via the Obi.  The call-through and callback features of the OBi are also useful to many.

moosbrth

Ok, thanks for that.

Why would you need SIPBroker or iNum if you have Ooma as your VOIP provider? I can see I have a lot to learn here.

If you don't have a land line is there an advantage to the OBi 110 over the 100? What does SIPBroker or iNum or the like add to the mix of an Ooma and one of the OBi's?

Has someone done a treatise  on the whole thing? Starting with IP, Comcast, AT&T, whoever your provider is, then OBi, then SIPBroker or INum or the like?

My usage is US and Canada, Philippines and Singapore, others in Southeast Asia.

Thanks, John

Stewart

Suppose you want your contacts in Singapore and Canada to be able to reach you with a local call; there are several options.  They could dial a local iNum or SIPBroker access number, followed by your iNum or enum.  With many providers, that would be free for you, but if your only connection is via Ooma, you'd have to pay someone to forward the call to your US Ooma number.  Likewise, if you got a dedicated number in some country, the incoming calls would likely be free to a VoIP connection, but there would be a charge to send them to Ooma.  One  free solution for your present setup is Rebtel, though it requires you to make a callback on each incoming call.

Many folks use the OBi110 with pseudo-landlines, i.e. locked VoIP devices with no direct IP access.  Cable "digital phone" and Vonage are typical examples.  If you don't foresee such a service or a landline in your future, the 110 offers no benefit.

Say you're in Singapore and using a Singtel prepaid SIM.  If you are spending (for local outbound) at least SG$20 per 20 days, you'll have unlimited free incoming.  You set up your OBi back in the States, so that when you call it, it doesn't answer and calls you back.  Through the AA, you can then make an outgoing call.  For example, if calling the US pr Canada, using Voxbeam Premium for the Obi->SG leg, and Google Voice for the outbound leg, the cost is only US$0.0075/min.  If you're running e.g. 30 minutes per day, the total (including mobile service) works out to only US$0.033/min.  And, quality is likely better than Singtel's budget 019 service (US$0.124/min. days, $0.062/min. nights and weekends).