When I was first approached about a briefing on Ooma I intentionally held off of doing the briefing, as I wanted thing out in the open. From the initial email I sensed this sounded a lot like client and friend David Beckemeyer's PhoneGnome so I used my wedding in France as a reason to delay going to far with things.
As I read Walt Mossberg's Wall Street Journal story, I sensed it even more. Now that I've read Om's post, I'm happy I waited.
Ooma sounds a lot like PhoneGnome to me, so I wonder what David has to say?
Ken Camp's thoughts are here and worth a read.
Update--Stuart Henshall on Unbound Spiral has a killer post that I agree with totally.
Jon Arnold also weighs in with some solid analysis.
Mark Evans (whom I miss as a telecom blog covering journalist a lot) lends his thoughts too.
Here's my comparison of Ooma vs. Skype Why Skype is Better than Ooma In my mind Skype clearly wins out (but not for everyone)
Posted by: Tech Untangled | July 28, 2007 at 01:33 AM
Cheap calls or free calls were a great hook 10 years ago, but companies need to figure out what is the value proposition in VoIP or they will suffer the fate of SunRocket. Leaving customers in the lerch without a service they payed for or more improtantly the identy of phone number, is bad "juju" for the VoIP market.
With Ashton Kutcher on board gives the company some news worthiness (maybe in Variety or People), but it still isn't going to switch my Mom or Dad from their POTS service.
It's time for the VoIP community to bring more to the table than the cheap calls for life angle and really give us a sustainable value and longevity. If AT&T goes bankrupt, they won't just shut off the copper running to my house. Another company will swoop in and take over the infrastructure in a heartbeat. It's not the tech saavy folks the companies need to woo over, its the average Joe and Jane, your Mom and Pops they need on board to build a successful company.
Posted by: Brian Blank | July 20, 2007 at 10:26 AM
My thoughts exactly. I fact, it took a little while to figure out how it is different from PhoneGnome. The answer appears to be that the $400 price (roughly, $200 more than PhoneGnome) provides free IP-to-PSTN calls in the US. With PhoneGnome, you would have to subscribe with a VoIP provider. It's kind of the ReplayTV vs Tivo model inthe early days of PVRs.
It may be that the simplicity will make it an easier sale than PhoneGnome. It may be that a lot of people buy in to the idea and then lose out when Ooma pulls a Sunrocket on them.
Either way, the service as it has been described is hardly a telecom revolution.
(Of course, when I first heard of it and saw Ashton Kutcher as the Creative Director, I thought Mossberg might have simply been punk'd.)
Posted by: anonymous | July 19, 2007 at 09:01 PM