A few months ago one of the largest pure VOIP service providers in the nation decided to take people’s money and disappear into the night. SunRocket promised cheap monthly charges and a bunch of exciting features that made their offer irresistible to some, especially small businesses. So for us who lost their SunRocket connections, there is ooma. Ooma is a new service that allows you to make unlimited calls within the U.S. without signing up for a contract. Of course, you pay an upfront fee but that is it. You won’t pay a penny or that is what is advertised. So I decided to investigate how true this P2P VoIP offer from ooma is

So here are the features that you get with ooma:

• Free Calls within U.S. (Pretty similar to what other VOIP providers offer)
• Fall Back System (You can connect ooma to your land-line, so if your Internet stops working, you can use your land-line with your ooma device)
•  Voice-Mail, Do not Disturb and many other good features.

The best thing about ooma is that you don’t have to pay any monthly fees. But what are the bads? Nobody talks about those. For starters, you are only guaranteed free service for three years. Ooma claims that there is a possibility of upgrade options and some fees after three years, but they don’t state whether it is definite or not. As a pessimist I would take that as a yes. Not a deal breaker though as you save so much on your phone bills in three years that will offset the upfront cost of the device. Besides, features such as free Second Line can also cost a fortune on a land-line service and the cost savings are significant.

The device is a little pricey. I think the system is solid and there is so much promise behind the Voice P2P architecture that ooma is offering, but I would have preferred having the option of paying off the device in 3 years instead. We all know what happened with SunRocket and ooma is not SunRocket, but still a part of me needs some hedging against a possible second-coming of SunRocket.

So should you get ooma? It all depends on what you specifically need. If you are a small business after a cheap phone solution, ooma can save you some cash (even if it’s for three years). If you are not tech savvy then you may want to look elsewhere. While ooma claims to be easy for everyone to work with (and I agree though I am biased), people who are allergic to anything tech related may want to get a traditional land-line. Of course, if you can work your way around your PC issues, then you can work with ooma no problem. They do offer some good support as well, and ooma has a great community behind it so you won’t be alone. At $399, ooma definitely beats PS3 and iPhone as the top holiday gift of 2007 IMO as you will get bored with your PS3 or iPhone after a while but ooma is a necessity and not a fad.