At CES 2012, there are quite a few products that would totally change the way you do things (or at least save you some money) that just don’t get enough coverage. We reported on Ooma’s new HD2 VoIP handset, but nothing beats getting the facts straight from the CEO of the company.
Luckily, Eric Stang had a chance to meet with us and chat it up. → Read More
Home phones are dumb phones defined. At best they feature a backlit four-line display. At worst they suck.
Well, Ooma just introduced the HD2, which not only pairs pefectly with the company’s VoIP service but offers a bunch of functions standard to feature phones. A 2-inch color LCD features picture caller-ID with the images garnered from the owner’s Facebook, Google and Yahoo friends. This can be managed either from on the handset or through the My Ooma web portal. But wait! There is more. → Read More
VoIP free domestic calling service Ooma has raised another $17.3 million in funding from existing investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Founder’s Fund and others. This brings the company’s total funding to a sizeable $83.3 million.
What’s compelling about Ooma is that company sort of flips the Vonage model on its axis — While Vonage charges a monthly service fee and gives away its VoIP hardware, Ooma sells its Telo product for $200 and then offers the domestic calling capabilities gratis for as long as customers own the product. → Read More
Reports are trickling into to our tipline that Ooma, a popular VOIP service, is currently experiencing major network issues. Currently, Ooma’s phone service seems offline nationwide, and their website and support forums are working sporadically if at all.
Some users (mostly in California) are reporting that their service is returning, but right now, it would appear that a majority of subscribers are unable to make or receive phone calls. Another outage similar in scale to this one occurred in 2009, with service remaining offline for nearly 6 hours. → Read More
If you dial 911 one on a VoIP phone you might be in a bit of trouble – many systems don’t support the location services most 911 operators use to find out where you are when you’re in trouble. So what to do? Well, Ooma has added a feature that should assuage the worry slightly. They’ve added 911 notification services that contact up to three people via email or text. → Read More
Ooma, my secret weapon when it comes to reducing the price of overseas calls, has just announced PureVoice, an “HD” voice technology that offers a “superior home telephony experience.” Essentially the system uses redundancy and compression to transmit voice packets at higher quality than you’d find in normal telephone conversations although, presumably, you’re still burdened by legacy voice technology on the carrier’s side.
You can check out a goofy demo of PureVoice on Ooma’s site. Press release follows. → Read More
Ooma is stepping up their offering in the international calling game. The VoIP service providers latest plans are about as competitive as can be. Watch out, Vonage, Ooma has your mom’s number. → Read More
Join me in welcoming Ooma Purevoice, Ooma’s new home phone sound standard that will make all of your calls sound like you’re talking on a phone made of pure gold and unicorn fur (your experience may vary). In celebration of the technology, Ooma is offering an Ooma Telo, a Telo handset, and a year of Ooma premier service. How do you win? UPDATE – Congratulations to Sunil, our winner. → Read More
Ooma might be onto something here. The VoIP provider is taking a different path with the Telo system: the phone calls are free. Like, you don’t ever have to pay for calling your Mom. You can either use your own phones or the Ooma high-end DECT 6.0 handset. Sounds nice, eh? Too bad there’s a huge admission price for the hardware. → Read More
VoIP startup Ooma has raised another $14 million in venture capital, we’ve heard from multiple sources, increasing the total amount of capital the company has raised to $56 million. This most recent round of financing was led by existing investor Worldview Technology Partners and was a restructuring that wiped out earlier investors who chose not to participate in this round.
The company was really on the ropes and down to its last few dollars, says one source. But sales, particularly at Best Buy, are brisk and the company should reach profitability with this new round of financing, he added.
Ooma first launched two years ago as a new type of consumer VoIP product. But a complicated business model (expensive hardware, free service) made it confusing for consumers to compare to competitive offerings from Vonage and others. → Read More
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 blog, 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. → Read More
Ooma – the $250 VoIP box that lets you make free calls in the US (and that lets you call the US for free from international locales, an undocumented perk to be sure) – is getting more and more popular thanks to the downturn. With a new Chief Marketing Officer, Rich Buchanan, and a new price the system is now selling like cakes that are hot. The boxes are now sold at 1,300 stores and a new version is coming this year so we can expect great things from this little company. Great things! → Read More
ooma has officially unveiled their new hardware at CES for the rest of the world to see and they’ve dubbed it Telo. It’s a cordless handset to go along with their VoIP service. → Read More
Consumer VoIP startup Ooma launched nearly a year ago and offered consumers free phone service for life, all you had to do was buy the hardware for $399. Just one problem. The sticker shock of paying $399 up front for the hardware put a lot of users off. And there weren’t many places you could actually buy the Ooma. It went on sale on their website in August 2007. When a number of key executives left the company (we grabbed Sarah Ross, their former VP Communications), some blogs said they were in big trouble. Amazon started selling Oomas later in the year, and customer reviews are overwhelmingly positive. A year later the company is still going. They added marketing executives Rich Buchanan to the team from Sling Media earlier this year – the guy that led the Sling marketing team to sell 100,000 units in its first six months of operations, and 500,000 units as of mid 2008. Buchanan brought Tami Bhaumik with him from Sling as well, who is now Ooma’s VP Marketing. Ooma is also now being sold in 26 southern California Best Buy retail stores, with a nationwide rollout scheduled later this month. The company has also tweaked their business model. They still offer the free service for a reduced price of $250, with optional additional features in a premier service add on for $13/month. The premier features include a second line, three-way calling, message screening and custom rings. I’ve been a happy Ooma customer for a year now. I also use Vonage, and Ooma’s call quality is better and there are fewer problems in general. If I didn’t have one I’d buy one now. CrunchBase Information ooma Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
In the past we’ve posted communications whenever someone has threatened to sue us. I think it’s entertaining, and it hopefully makes people think twice before firing up the legal machine with ridiculous claims. So when YouTube sent us a cease and desist letter, I posted it. And when that asshole Shannon Terry threatened to sue us out of existence, I posted that too. Now the most ridiculous claim yet. Richard Figueroa, who claims to have the rights to this image of Ashton Kutcher, is demanding that we pay him $150,000 immediately or else he’ll sue us for $1.5 million. Hi Michael, My name is Richard Figueroa and I am contacting you on behalf of the image you are using of Ashton Kutcher that Beth Boldt had taken. Beth is upset that your company has been using his image to generate traffic and revenue to your company without her permission.We are asking that you pay Beth $150,000,00 for the image that you have been using to generate business. If you choose not to settle this bill now we will ask for $1,500,000 in damages in loss of income form the image you have been borrowing for creating traffic to your website with here picture.if you google Beth Boldt you will get an idea of who she is in the modeling and entertainment industry.We would like to settle this quietly without the media getting involved however if you choose not to agree on these terms we will file a lawsuit against your company for copyright violation and we all know how that’s going to turn out since she’s the photographer of the image you are using. So here is her invoice: Please make check out to Beth Boldt in the amount of ($150,000,00) send it to [deleted contact information] And after payment is made you may not use the image of Ashton anymore unless you want to negotiate a contract. Thank you Richard Figueroa BethBoldt Here’s the problem: we never used that image of Ashton Kutcher on any of our websites. The one image we did use (in this post) was supplied by Ooma (Kutcher is the creative director for Ooma), and Ooma says they own that image. The problem turns out to be that if you do a search on Google (or “the Google” as Figueroa calls it), the image in question appears at the top of the results and is → Read More
http://www.brightcove.tv/playerswf New consumer VOIP service Ooma officially launched yesterday and began selling units on their website. See additional coverage from Dean Takahashi and Adweek. They also released their first (drug induced?) viral video to promote the service, which I have embedded above. The video was conceptualized by Ashton Kutcher, the company’s creative director (hear our interview with Kutcher and CEO Andrew Frame here). Kutcher’s production company, Katalyst Films, produced it. The company says the video is loaded with symbolism, and the meaning will become clearer over time as more videos are released in the series. Whatever it is, it’s entertaining. Get one of the last ten free Oomas The company gave TechCrunch readers fifty free Ooma systems in July. Today they say they’ll give us more to distribute to readers now – the last ten free Oomas. To win, leave a comment below and tell me WTF you think the video means, because I have no idea. The most creative answers win. → Read More
Vonage released its second quarter financial results today (I’ve embedded the release below with the new Zoho Viewer that launched last night). And while the stock continues to slide, revenues are way up and losses are slowing. Perhaps they can avoid the fate of competitor SunRocket, which shut down last month. The company also says that they have “substantially completed” the workaround deployment for two of the patents at issue in the company-threatening patent litigation with Verizon. And development of the workaround for the third patent at issue is completed says Chairman Jeffrey Citron. A Federal court will have to agree before the company is in the clear. Revenues for the quarter were a record $206 million, a 43% increase from the same period last year. Net losses were $34 million, down from $74 million in Q2 2006. The company still has $344 million in cash, although $66 million of that is reserved for collateral in the patent litigation. Some bad news, though – customer churn increased to 2.5%/month. The company says they are extending the grace period for non-payment to encourage retention…but they may be retaining the deadbeats. I am a long time Vonage customer but will soon be switching to Ooma (which, by the way, became available for purchase this morning) and getting rid of that $25/month Vonage fee. Vonage is a lot cheaper than a normal phone line, but free is hard to compete with. Perhaps some of the new hardware Vonage is testing with some customers will help them. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
