Exactly one year ago today, a widespread outage hit Google’s GrandCentral (recently upgraded and relaunched as Google Voice). At the time, we wrote “If you want to be a phone company, and get your users to rely on you to manage all of your incoming calls, this simply cannot happen”. A year later those words ring true as a widespread outage has hit another VoIP provider: Ooma, the device that offers users free phone service for life.
Beginning around five hours ago, Ooma users across the country began to Tweet that their service wasn’t working. Ooma technicians have been regularly posting updates to the site’s official forums, which indicates that an issue stemming from an internet outage is to blame (the company’s CMO has tweeted that “a route out of our datacenter has been severed”). Twitter users are reporting sporadic success using the service in the last few minutes, which appears to have been down entirely earlier this afternoon.
Ooma has had a somewhat checkered history, struggling for years to gain market-share as consumers largely scoffed at its high pricetag (the service may have been free for life, but the $400 price of admission to purchase the unit was simply too steep for most people). But more recently, the company has been on the rebound after lowering its price to $250 per unit and closing a third round of funding last September.
Update: CMO Rich Buchanan has left the following comment below:
It’s been a tough day. Yes we at Ooma take this VERY SERIOUSLY. It appears that one of the routes out of our datacenter (and that of several other SV companies) has been experiencing problems. We are attempting fix the problem, but the challenge is that it’s not our network leg or hardware that is the problem.
The service if fluctuating up and down as we try to establish new routes around the problem. As soon as we find a permanent fix we’ll post notices on our blog and on twitter.
Our sincere apologies to those impacted this afternoon.
Rich Buchanan
CMO
Ooma
Update 2: As of 5:15 PM PST, Ooma reports that its service is back to normal.
Google Voice has been spotty today as well…perhaps there is a link?
All day today only about 1/3 of my Google Voice calls are working.
It’s really bad….anyone else having google Voice problems?
Hi Jason,
It’s been a tough day. Yes we at Ooma take this VERY SERIOUSLY. It appears that one of the routes out of our datacenter (and that of several other SV companies) has been experiencing problems. We are attempting fix the problem, but the challenge is that it’s not our network leg or hardware that is the problem.
The service if flucuating up and down as we try to establish new routes around the problem. As soon as we find a permanent fix we’ll post notices on our blog and on twitter.
Our sincere apologies to those impacted this afternoon.
Rich Buchanan
CMO
Ooma
check out the map of the outage on twitter by searching for “ooma” on http://twittermap.appspot.com
Being a phone company, Many (might) rely on this service for very serious things. 911 calls and the like come to mind. It places a very heavy burden on this type of startup as even the slightest failings are big news.
I am sure they will have the issue corrected soon and yes, they *are* still better than Vonage.
You should never rely on any VoIP product for 911. Having said that, Ooma is hands down the best home VoIP product I’ve used. Great price, excellent voice quality and normally super reliable. So happy to leave Vonage behind.
True internet phone is not a reliable alternative but if you do use it as your primary service i suggest keeping an old cell phone around and fully charged. Even a cell that does not have active service can be still be used for 911 calls.
multihoming: it’s the latest thing.
Rich, please consider sending your users a note stating the issue and possible resolution time.
I and my friends would appreciate a small note in mail
So what if it goes down for 5-6 hours once a year. Both verizon and comcast would g down much more often!
I guess the author doesn’t remember that vonage didn’t have 911 services available in the beginning and peolpe died and the company’s still around. I think ooma can maage a 5-6 hour outage. I love my ooma and won’t even think of going back to anything else!
Ooma users will use their required landline for E911 right?
Credit where credit is due here… After my tweet (as I did not realize that Ooma was on Twitter) I was contacted via twitter directly by Rich Buchanan the CMO of Ooma who advised status. I know of few organizations that would actively reach out in such a manner.
Further, this service is fantastic. I have been VERY happy with the quality of service and the features. This is a tremendous money saver to say the least!! My only regret was not finding OOMA faster.
Yes they had an outage, and that stinks – But it is how a company responds to these kinds of issues that is key. They did keep customers apprised of what they knew and the steps they were taking to correct.
I recommend OOMA to my friends regularly and todays response makes me an even bigger fan of the OOMA service.
Yes, except for the fact that the service is still down for a great number of users but the company has posted “all clear” to the outage announcement. This is simply not true. Bad, bad business.
I was right in the middle of an serious tech support call when I was dropped. At first, I blamed the company I was talking to. But then I saw the flashing red Ooma light. Usually just unplugging and plugging in again fixes any hitch I might have, Not today. I”m glad I checked their forum.
Powerless to contact the support center (cell phones don’t work in my neck of the woods) I downloaded Skype and BINGO I’m back in business. Thanks you Intarnets.
Dissapointed that this has happened but hope that they get back online as soon as possible. I’m a white rabbit user and I have been pleased with their service over the past 2 yrs.
Fortunately I don’t use my home phone number as my primary form of communication.
-Fernando
Exactly, I have been a White rabbit user and have been using Ooma going on 2 years now and never have had a problem, the box glitches once in the blue but it has been great. What company doesn’t have an outage time from time. In the 2 years I’ve had it, this is a first major outage I can remember.
Would still recommend Ooma to all my friends and family!
my magicJack was up and running flawlessly. This is the difference between a virtual phone company and a CLEC or REAL telephone network. magicJack has control over their network and has a redundant back-up. I would absolutely recommend magicJack.
My last AT&T landline outage (just 10 days ago) lasted 52 hours. I had no dialtone during the entire time. Granted it was just me and not the entire phone network. But let’s keep this outage in perspective. All services experience outages from time to time. The difference is in how the company responds and how it treats its customers.
A second ooma outage on Wednesday, April 15! I have been with ooma for only 3 weeks- I hope the outage of April 13 and today’s ongoing outage are not harbingers of things to come!
I love my ooma, but I depend on it to run my business too! I am impressed with the level of personal response (via email) but these problems need to be resolved once and for all!
There is a new sheriff in town the company is 5linx.The company unique products and customer service pose itself too be a leader in VoIP industry.
Verizon landline out for 9 DAYS! Viatalk constantly down and it was ‘our fault, we had to fix it’ the router wasnt programmed right blah blah…
Ooma was out for a few hours once in the last what ? year? so what. It’s FREE now! No telecom fee, no service fee, no idiot tax. All FREE!!!!!!!!! Works much better than Lingo, Viatalk, Verizon, and others I have had.