It's time for Texting / SMS

[Brad Ross]

Come on OOMA. This is ridiculous already.

[n-crowd]

Funny that we do not see any kind of response from the people at Ooma on this topic...

Ooma, Please let us know if/when you plan on implementing this important feature, and if not then please explain why not.

[murphy]

Ooma uses the country wide analog phone network so it can connect to all kinds of phone systems. Texting is only available on a totally digital network like the cell phone network. Unless the USA converts the analog phone network to digital it's not going to happen. Not only would the entire infrastructure have to be changed, every analog phone in use today would be obsolete and have to be replaced.

[tipa]

murphy, not sure that I agree with you. Ooma is based on packetized digital voice services, not analog unless the destination phone number is on a provider's analog network, at which point it is converted at the destination telco's CO. Ooma's HD voice VoIP calling is an example of Ooma not using the analog network at all. Adding texting would be a logical move that could attract new customers. Vonage and other VoIP providers similar to Ooma already provide text messaging capabilities. Why they haven't added this feature is unknown, as it appears that they have not responded to this request.

[oomamaniacal]

Callcentric has this feature, but it costs extra. I think if Ooma offered it as a Premier feature, it would attract more Premier subscribers.

[JohnSF]

Long time Ooma customer, but I decided to try magicJack with a new phone number, keeping the Ooma service. After using magicJack for a while, I was not satisfied with magicJack for two reasons: 1) Calls often dropped after 30 minutes. This might be due to the magicGo device and not the network. 2) The magicJack call blocking and spam prevention are significantly inferior to Ooma's features. So I am staying with Ooma.

But one feature of the magicJack iPhone app that works very well is the ability to send and receive SMS from other mobile phones. I can't imagine it would be too difficult for Ooma to add this capability to their app and I think it would fill a big hole in the service: Being able to give out 1 number: at home receiving the call using Ooma Telo or other device, mobile using the call forwarding to your mobile phone, and mobile receiving and sending SMS using the Ooma app.

[ravenblue]

The crazy thing is, they are now offering this service for enterprise-class customers, but not for consumers:

https://ca.ooma.com/enterprise-communic ... messaging/

[artsvdo]

SMS Text Messaging is now available!

https://support.ooma.com/office/ooma-bu ... -overview/

Been waiting since 2015 for this!!!

[oomamaniacal]

Now, how long do we have to wait for texting on the Ooma residential mobile app?

[Barkdust]

I used to recommend OOMA residential to many of my friends and neighbors. I stopped doing so a year ago when I did not get a very important text message sent to my OOMA number — and the sender did not know that the message had not been delivered. I will recommend OOMA again only when text messages can be received or at least a sender gets a message that their text was not received.