Telo Air 2: One Phone Jack vs. Ooma Hub, Two Jacks

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zippy the pinhead
Posts:5
Joined:Tue Mar 31, 2009 6:00 pm
Telo Air 2: One Phone Jack vs. Ooma Hub, Two Jacks

Post by zippy the pinhead » Fri Jan 08, 2021 2:43 pm

We have a Hub and Scout which we have used for more than a decade. Still works pretty good. We have the Hub connected to our telephone jack in one room and the Scout connected to a jack in a different room. House phone (Panasonic cordless base station with five handsets scattered here and there) connects to the Scout from a central location.

International calls sometimes have poor quality. I am unsure if this is an Ooma Hub artifact. Our Hub is behind our Router, to prevent it from being a bottleneck. But our cable service is 200Mbps up. Thus we are considering

Thinking to take advantage of the Costco offer and switch up to a Telo Air 2. With only one phone jack on the back, I assume I will need to connect my Panasonic cordless base station into that jack? In other words, the hardwired phone line wiring in the house becomes useless?

I just want to make sure I understand what I am getting. Thanks in advance...

murphy
Posts:7554
Joined:Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:49 pm
Location:Pennsylvania

Re: Telo Air 2: One Phone Jack vs. Ooma Hub, Two Jacks

Post by murphy » Fri Jan 08, 2021 4:23 pm

Make sure that any landline phone company has been disconnected from your house wiring.
You can then connect the Telo phone jack to the house wiring. If you need to connect a phone at that location use a standard phone line splitter. Back in 2009 one came with my Telo.

If any of your phones have real bells as opposed to electronic bells, get rid of them. The Telo can drive a maximum of 5 REN (Ringer Equivalence Number).
Customer since January 2009
Telo with 2 Handsets, a Linx, and a Safety Phone
Telo2 with 2 Handsets and a Linx

zippy the pinhead
Posts:5
Joined:Tue Mar 31, 2009 6:00 pm

Re: Telo Air 2: One Phone Jack vs. Ooma Hub, Two Jacks

Post by zippy the pinhead » Fri Jan 08, 2021 8:08 pm

@murphy thanks for the quick reply.

Please let me make sure I am tracking you here. The Ooma Hub apparently requires a Scout if one wants to make some use of the built-in wiring in the house. I won't pretend to understand exactly what the Scout does, but if I am tracking you, you are advising that I can use the single phone jack on the Telo Air 2, connect it to a phone jack in the same room where my WiFi router is installed (so the Telo Air 2 can be hardwired to the router with an ethernet cable), and then simply discard the Scout that currently connects with our Panasonic base station? In other words, the Scout is no longer needed, and I can simply use the built-in telephone wiring for my Panasonic base station?

Can you tell me, what does the Telo Air 2 do that the Hub & Scout did not do?

Thanks in advance for any clarification you can provide.

murphy
Posts:7554
Joined:Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:49 pm
Location:Pennsylvania

Re: Telo Air 2: One Phone Jack vs. Ooma Hub, Two Jacks

Post by murphy » Sat Jan 09, 2021 4:01 am

The Scout is not compatible with a Telo.
It's equivalent for a Telo is a Linx.
The Linx connects to the Telo via a DECT 6 radio connection and provides an additional phone jack.
It is not needed unless you will have Premier service and a second phone number.
Even then the same second line can be achieved with an Ooma handset which also connects via DECT 6 radio.

The Hub has not been supported for many years. To my knowledge there is still only one server located on the west coast. Mine was retired many years ago. The ability to connect a landline phone line to it is not possible with a Telo.
An existing landline phone company must be physically disconnected from the house wiring before it can be used for Telo wiring.

There are Telo servers on the East and West coasts. This reduces the audio delay in a conversation. When there was only a West coast server, a person calling their neighbor on the East coast had their audio (digital packets) cross the country twice to make the connection.

The Telo has features that don't exist for the Hub.
Handsets with color screens, the ability to display a contact list, a call log, and a lot of other data on the screen.

There is also a smartphone app that can be used to make phone calls using the Telo phone number instead of the smartphone phone number.

There is an alarm system built into the Telo that uses DECT 6 connections to various extra cost sensors. I have no experience with that since I already had an alarm system before Ooma developed theirs.

Read the detailed comparison of Basic and Premier service on the Ooma web site.
Customer since January 2009
Telo with 2 Handsets, a Linx, and a Safety Phone
Telo2 with 2 Handsets and a Linx

zippy the pinhead
Posts:5
Joined:Tue Mar 31, 2009 6:00 pm

Re: Telo Air 2: One Phone Jack vs. Ooma Hub, Two Jacks

Post by zippy the pinhead » Tue Jan 12, 2021 12:28 pm

Appreciate the detailed reply.

We are on the west coast and though we have had occasional hiccups with call quality, for the most part the Hub/Scout has been pretty solid for more than a decade.

We have family members still using Hub/Scout units as well, so the situation with the server is timely news.

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