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It is shocking that the Ooma app does not yet have real texting/sms capability. Ooma purchased Talkatone in 2013, the Talkatone app has text/sms capability built in. Many other competitors, such as FreeTone, offer this capability.

Texting+SMS would introduce a major change to the way people use the app, and its popularity. It could also be a valuable source of revenue for Ooma if they offered this as an add-on.

Agreed! +1
File under, "Duh ..." (Of course!)

Some of us have integrated Google Voice to utilize texting. With recent improvements it offers both SMS and MMS. If you are an Ooma Premier subscriber, you can use Google Voice Extensions to (somewhat) seamlessly join them. You can also add an Obihai adapter to even give more options. We use Google Voice, several Telos, and an Obi202 as well as 3 cell phones to form a very versatile yet inexpensive telecommunications system.

ravenblue wrote:It is shocking that the Ooma app does not yet have real texting/sms capability. Ooma purchased Talkatone in 2013, the Talkatone app has text/sms capability built in. Many other competitors, such as FreeTone, offer this capability. Texting+SMS would introduce a major change to the way people use the app, and its popularity. It could also be a valuable source of revenue for Ooma if they offered this as an add-on.

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Well, Talkatone used to work reasonably well, but at the present time it is nearly worthless. Frankly, since Talkatone is owned by Ooma, I don't understand why a subscribers Ooma Mobile number could not be used as a text only number on Talkatone. There are some other issues with Talkatone that need attention as well.

I appreciate that there are alternatives, but somehow Ooma needs to get the message that this is a huge gap in their services. I'm reasonably happy, but before my next yearly payment comes around I fully intend to look for alternatives almost entirely because of this lack.

I can't tell you how often someone says "I kept texting you and you didn't answer" even when I had plainly labeled my number "voice". We are coming to a time when people consider every phone number to be able to do SMS. I know that's not true by a long shot, but perception becomes reality, and the reality is that this is a big gap in Ooma's service.

And yes, I would pay a couple dollars extra for it!

I use Ooma for business conversations. If someone or I want to communicate by SMS it has to be via my seldom used cell phone. It would be more professional if I could use the Ooma phone on my desk to send/receive texts with customers Instead of telling them to use my personal cell number. It’s time for Ooma to include texting for us Premier customers.

Actually,it's time for Oomas customers to accept they are using a second rate service that has no interest in improving their service.

C'ya!

Please ooma, if you are not going to support receiving of text messages, then AT LEAST LET THE SENDER OF A TEXT MESSAGE KNOW THAT THEIR MESSAGE CANNOT BE DELIVERED!
Otherwise, they assume their message was delivered, and then a fiasco results, and no one is happy.

I have to emphasize:

Not being able to receive text messages in just an inconvenience, something we can live with.

On the other hand, not letting the sender of a text message know that their message could not be delivered can create all sorts of embarrassing situations. This is simply unacceptable.

Yes. Seconded, Thirded and Fourthed!!!!

A very silly oversight, it seems to me!

The inability to receive even just "incoming" texts has been a real problem for us because people continue to text us (and then get upset when we aren't responding) assuming that all phones should receive text messages.
Also, I am a premier subscriber and don't have the "google voice extensions" option in my dashboard at all.