Thanks for the reply Dennis. It will be interesting to see what they do as the percentage of non-phoneline users grows.

The research noted earlier about 70% of VOIP users retain a landline is interesting and seems to be the basis of the Ooma model. I think there is a difference in answering questions in a survey and ponying up a $399 for a device. I kept a landline for 3 mths while testing vonage originally and then canceled the landline. I can say absolutely that even as an early adopter and someone that loves testing out new gadgets, that I wouldn’t spend $399 to try out Ooma. I have no plans to add a landline to my house. Maybe after I get my White Rabbit device and give it a spin, I’ll come out thinking differently about the device (but I’m still not adding a landline). If so, I’ll let you all know.

the ooma product can be used with or without a landline. By using your ooma system with a landline, you get to keep your phone number, increase the reliability of your phone service, and retain traditional 911 services. This is the safest and most reliable way to use ooma, and allows you to still make and receive phone calls, including 911 calls, even if your Internet service is down or your power is out.

By using your ooma system without a landline, ooma will give you a new phone number and you will save the most money, however you will not be able to make or receive phone calls, including 911 calls, if your Internet service is down or your power is out.

However you want to use it, the cost of the product is the same (limited time offer of $399 for the ooma Hub and includes all of the premium services – the Instant Second Line and the Broadband Answering Machine).

To answer the second part of your question, Jon Arnold commented on an interesting piece of information last year:

http://blogs.pu...aves_res_1.html

According to these results, 36% of VoIP users rely on their POTS lines as their primary service, with VoIP as a secondary service (maybe for outgoing long-distance or international calls). Another 34% use VoIP as their primary service, but maintain a POTS line. Only 10% said VoIP was their only home phone service. So this puts the percentage of people who maintain a landline at 70%.

So, yes you are right, the capacity of the distributed termination network only expands if a user retains their landline. However, since phones lines are often idle (usually

Plus it has some concerns about it. See it at http://techunta...erns-about-ooma

furthermore, Skype appears to be a better alternative, even financially for quite some time, than Ooma. http://techunta...etter-than-ooma

http://techdump...ll-of-the-week/

How can you keep mentioning Ooma and keep ignoring your own payola issues? TechCrunch20’s Demo Pit? Ooma? Y Combinator? How many people pay you to write articles about their stupid businesses?

@ Patricia

The point of a blog comment system is to use it to elicit opinions. If you have a problem with that, then maybe you should just stop commenting. It’s funny that you use the comment system to tell other people not to comment. There’s an inherent problem in your logic.

http://www.tech...as-for-readers/

Find out what Social News Sites are discussing this post over at metagg.com…

Am not sure if it a geographical issue, but i would not slam it for sure.

Michael – nice catch on the AOL thing. My fave AOL retention tactic – “You can’t cancel online”. Guess they don’t believe that much in the power of the internet. Heh.

They say there will be a non-phoneline version of the product in the future, but I don’t understand how it will work exactly (and wonder if it will have the same pricing structure). I believe in the podcast they said something about how their bandwidth expands every time someone adds a system to the network, but it seems with a non-phoneline version, that wouldn’t be true. Am I missing something?

Take it easy BDB. I’m just saying.

As for understanding why I think there is an opportunity for a fashion blog/social network/whatev online, I must not be all that dumb – Kaboodle sold for what was it? 30 million to Hearst? I made money on that. Guess there must be something up with that 5% of those fashionistas that actually use that stuff.

I do not come here to plug my site and get hits. I don’t need to.

Ooma needs to substantially seed their network with peers who also happen to have PSTN lines plugged into their boxes (which although relatively cheap, are not “free”), so that they can utilize this P2P network for call termination.

If their peers are not connected to the PSTN, there is no way to terminate calls without using a commercial gateway, which costs them $$ to terminate each call.

Until then, they will need to utilize the services of commercial providers to terminate their calls, and there is nothing innovative in that scenario. They call this “Fake it till you make it”.

I believe that SIP based voice services will eventually become ubiquitous, much like email. I also don’t buy into the school of thought that claims ad supported “free calling” will fly.

A lot of service providers bank on selling users “advanced features” to generate sustainable revenues, but the vast majority of users (not first adopters) will never need/want anything but dialtone, call waiting and voicemail. Well, I take that back, perhaps they’ll pay for annoying ringtones and other mindless widgets….

Features are great for powerusers who actually find telephony mildly sexy, but for common folk, which is 99% of the market these companies need to court, they are not compelling.

I think Vonage will only improve as ISPs provision VoIP calls. Otherwise, there’s nothing anybody can do about jitter, drops, and other poor quality, which is the one thing that makes Vonage suck. Sorry, not a big fan of “free” voip calls – nothing’s free, and I fear what they will attempt to make money on (unless its services, but I think you have to have a pretty sophisticated network to be able to roll out new services that add value).

I don’t know. It’s early to have a brain about this stuff.