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[Rant]

Posted: Thu May 23, 2013 10:51 pm
by PandT
[RANT]
Ooma, rated top but delivers substandard voice connection quality and no faxing for me.
I have persistent echos. Always.
I get weird tones, yes, just that, tones. Sounds like someone hitting a key on an organ in the middle of my conversations
Blank spaces, no sound on one end (or the other) for short periods (Less than 1 second) Missed words in the conversation
Can't fax. Forget Linx connectivity for faxing, it does NOT work at all and they should be fined for saying it does
Faxing, fails not some but all of the time - I am redoing the connections, Ooma box first, I have no confidence it will work
Suspect my MA location from the Ooma servers in CA, network delay destroys all expected benefits
Wish I had never switched but it was so much cheaper, If I had only known how bad the disruptions would be...
Voice quality, when it's working is close to, but not as good as, I had. I am disappointed. Some lose was expected but the total lose is catastrophic, I can't afford to have the phone go DEAD for .5 seconds while Ooma has a fit of non response since a single word missed could be life or death. (we have two adult disabled people living with us who have special needs).
[/RANT]

I am looking for something else, sadly, I may have to go back to Comcast just to get functional phone and fax service.

Re: [Rant]

Posted: Fri May 24, 2013 2:10 am
by dsinternet
Looks like you have posted a few times. What have you tried to fix the problems. These are all problems that The forum has seen in the past; and got corrected. I would guess a reboot would have fixed most of the problems. Have you called customer service. Have you tied a presonal email to someone working at Ooma that monitors the forum?
Hope things work out. I have had Ooma for 3 or 4 years and love it. Best of luck.

Re: [Rant]

Posted: Fri May 24, 2013 5:56 am
by lbmofo
PandT, I am guessing that you still have the cable modem that provided you Comcast digital voice service too?
Others have experienced voice quality issues too in this scenario.
I would go get your own modem Motorola sb6121 from Costco and swap your modem out (need to call Comcast to do this) and save 7 to 10 in modem rental fee as well as get rid of voice quality issues.

Some people don't have voice quality issues even if using comcast voip modem; I suppose a hit & miss.
I have a friend who has been putting off getting his own modem; he says Ooma quality has been excellent.

Re: [Rant]

Posted: Fri May 24, 2013 2:12 pm
by sailcat25
I had similar problems at first (I don't have a fax though). I went through multiple re boots, a replacement Telo, etc. - lots of aggravation. I did take advantage of this forum along with Ooma customer service and finally had my past ISP change my modem after they told me their old one was a good one - I should have done this FIRST even though they kept saying there was nothing wrong on their end. My Ooma service was almost flawless after that. Ooma did have a system outage once a couple(?) of years ago that lasted a few hours. Then I moved out of state to a different ISP but used my own modem purchased at Costco rather than rent theirs (1st ISP included the modem). No issues except when the ISP required a re boot on their system. Recently I moved again, took my Telo, Ooma handset and my Uniden wireless set, plugged the Telo into my son's router, waited for boot up and have been using both lines - almost flawless again. Very rarely since after the initial problems will I get a tone or a dropped word

I have had cell phones since they first came on the market. The 1st cell phone had to be hard wired into my vehicle (I did have the option of an aluminum suitcase, "portable" version, the next newer version was in a bag with a lead/acid battery, really portable (not) and I've had traditional business and home telephones for decades. None of them were perfect and sometimes totally useless. The cell technology took a long time before it became reliable, at least for me. Ooma hasn't been perfect either but I will attest that after the bugs have been worked out it has been very reliable maybe as much so as the old landlines I used to use.

Going on 3 years I've saved a bundle.

Re: [Rant]

Posted: Fri May 24, 2013 10:28 pm
by PandT
lbmofo wrote:PandT, I am guessing that you still have the cable modem that provided you Comcast digital voice service too?
Others have experienced voice quality issues too in this scenario.
I would go get your own modem Motorola sb6121 from Costco and swap your modem out (need to call Comcast to do this) and save 7 to 10 in modem rental fee as well as get rid of voice quality issues.

Some people don't have voice quality issues even if using comcast voip modem; I suppose a hit & miss.
I have a friend who has been putting off getting his own modem; he says Ooma quality has been excellent.
I have the Motorola DOCSIS 3 modem originally supplied by Comcast (Surfboard SB6120), I was the first (bragging) user in my city to get DOCSIS 3 service and I was surprised and, ridiculously, proud of the fact. I have been looking at replacing it just because of the fee for 'rental' that they charge and the fact that I have to reboot it every so often to get my speed back. The scum have actually reduced my 'real life' download speed since I cancelled their phone service but that is another Rant that most assuredly can't be placed at Ooma's doorstep.

The modem does not have digital voice built in, I had another, ancient and since removed voice enabling box along with it's signal splitter, also removed.

Do you think that changing it out for a newer model would make any difference?

I just got my first bill from Ooma for $3.71 and I really like that, I did pay a year in advance for the extras and I got a Linx box for the separate line that I wanted to dedicate to faxing but it simply doesn't work.

Also, since the web site will not allow me to change the linx associated phone number, I will have to actually call Ooma to have them unlink the Linx box from that other 'fictitious' made up account that they make you create in order to associate the new number with a dedicated fax line since the options have disappeared from the web site so that I can't change it back myself, color me mystified.

I want it to work, I need it to work, I am just a bit PO'ed with the echos, random tones and my total inability so far to fax anything, in or out.

Re: [Rant]

Posted: Fri May 24, 2013 10:37 pm
by lbmofo
Without any other evidence, just you having to reboot the modem makes me want to say try a new modem.

Re: [Rant]

Posted: Fri May 24, 2013 11:49 pm
by PandT
lbmofo wrote:Without any other evidence, just you having to reboot the modem makes me want to say try a new modem.
Seriously?

Comcast claimed that my signal strength was 'yellow' before the change
After the change, I don't have any facts yet, sorry. - Rebooting out of habit

I removed the splitter from the main cable that supplied both the modem and the phone box.

In theory, I will have gained at least 3db in signal strength plus the insertion lose to the splitter.

Re: [Rant]

Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 2:03 am
by murphy
Connect to http://192.168.100.1 which is a web page inside of the modem.
Go to the page that has signal levels and report the downstream signal levels and signal to noise ratios for all 4 channels.
Also report the upstream power levels.

The downstream levels should be between -10 dBmV and +10 dBmV with 0 being the center of the range.
The upstream power should be less than 55 dBmV with lower being better.


I have no idea what a signal strength of "yellow" means but it doesn't sound good.

Re: [Rant]

Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2013 12:54 pm
by parity_bit
PandT wrote:
lbmofo wrote:Without any other evidence, just you having to reboot the modem makes me want to say try a new modem.
Seriously?

Comcast claimed that my signal strength was 'yellow' before the change
After the change, I don't have any facts yet, sorry. - Rebooting out of habit

I removed the splitter from the main cable that supplied both the modem and the phone box.

In theory, I will have gained at least 3db in signal strength plus the insertion lose to the splitter.
I do not have comcast but do have another competing provider. I can relate on the rental fees and such.
I'm surprised that tweaking your QOS settings under your Ooma Telo's internal settings webserver hasn't been suggested yet.
(default: 172.27.35.1 from the home port, or if you have your Ooma exposed to your LAN's static or dynamicly assigned IP on the internet port--then whatever that is for you.) The QOS setting is under Advanced on the left hand side and incidentally is where you'll find "Allow access to web interface from INTERNET port" which comes very much in handy when you don't want to fool with ethernet cable swapping.

I have a 10+ mbps connection and was having problems similar to what you describe; it all came down to tweaking the Quality of Service settings. I have 768 for both up and down and it has been virtual smooth sailing since.


Your second troubleshooting effort might entail manually verifying your firewall settings. I would (for testing purposes) alternately disable your hardware firewall on your DOCSIS3 cable interface box and if your still having problems after upping your QOS and disabling the firewall from any aditional routers you may have in the mix then I'd investigate any QOS settings on those, too.

As far as the Linx goes, what you want to do can be done. Go to my.ooma.com/phone_numbers. My setup has this section provisioned into two "accounts" which it sounds like a tech tried to do for you. I'm going to assume you have two numbers available to you supplied by your Ooma Telo with Premium. (Because you have that capability) On the second account simply click the "Setup Device" button/link with a blue plus sign. For name, name it anything pertinent, for Type--Linx, of course, and for Mode choose Fax Machine. I assigned the secondary number to the Linx, but do it however will work best for you.

It does work this way. Or, shall we say, it should? If it's not then call tech support and asked to speak to a higher up level than the first guy or gal that answers.