Ooma VOIP Issues Never Resolved

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It was with great regret that I had to return the Ooma VOIP device and get a refund from Amazon after testing and tweaking it for more than a week. The device which offers unlimited free over the Internet calling just would not provide the voice quality level of the MagicJack or the MagicJack plus despite the device costing nearly $130 and being configured and optimized every which way I could find on the forums and the company support itself.

The Oooma device was said to only work well if it was in front of the router, and directly plugged into your Cable modem.  My cable speed is 30mbps down and 15mbps up approximately which is confirmed by Speedtest.net on numerous occasions.

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Yet despite this the Ooma would not provide the voice quality and clarity needed to where my callers would say it sounded at least on par with the MagicJack a far cheaper device.  They said my voice was tinny, and randomly it would break up.

I updated the QoS in the device, the Ooma by default I read was using 384kbps reserved for voice, so I tried 20 different settings from 1MB up to 15MB in the bandwidth and confirmed with it’s own test/configuration yet could not get it to perform well.

In addition to the voice quality being poor, I started having trouble with all of my Roku devices the moment the Ooma was now between my router and cable modem.  Amazon VOD and Netflix would stagger video play more frequently, the Roku would have intermittent issues accessing the Internet and when I removed the Ooma from the picture the problems all resolved.

I met many people who recommend the Ooma and even the UPS store person said he used one for 3 years and was surprised I was sending it back, yet when compared to the MagicJack plus which is far cheaper even with annual fee it turns out to be the same as paying taxes every month with the Ooma.

The only thing the MagicJack has problems with is conference lines such as those provided by other VOIP services or Citrix which it will alert you and say you need to prefund credit to be able to dial conference calls.  In the end though the MagicJack Plus turns out to be my most recommended VOIP device again at this time after being majorly disappointed with the Ooma VOIP device.

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Updated: December 30, 2012 — 8:00 am