Ooma Forums

Anyone have an educated guess on how many oomas are installed?
I ask because I'm about to pull the plug and have my phone numbers ported to ooma and I'm trying to get a feel for the long term viability of the company.
Thanks.

it's good to know someone else out there thinks just like me. I posted this very same question two weeks ago. The thread is here:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5903

Aha! I didn't see that one.
Still no answer to the question although there's a lot of speculation.
My concern is the ponzi scheme element of ooma's business plan (and I don't mean that in a negative way).
If only 25% of their customers sign up for premium after spending $200 or so on the hardware they don't have much in terms of an on-going revenue stream so they have to sell more and more hardware to get revenue and get the additional premium subscribers.
Don't get me wrong, I like ooma and the service has been great. I just don't want to pick up the phone one day and my ooma dial tone has gone mute.

AZGuyJoe wrote:....
Still no answer to the question although there's a lot of speculation.
...
Don't get me wrong, I like ooma and the service has been great. I just don't want to pick up the phone one day and my ooma dial tone has gone mute.

.

If you're too worried about your investment... you should get the hardware from Costco which will take it back at any time if not satisfied... unless they change their policy... the day something happens!

.

Not the issue. I'm looking out a bit more long term than Costco's return window.
Thanks.

AZGuyJoe wrote:Aha! I didn't see that one.
Still no answer to the question although there's a lot of speculation.
My concern is the ponzi scheme element of ooma's business plan (and I don't mean that in a negative way).
If only 25% of their customers sign up for premium after spending $200 or so on the hardware they don't have much in terms of an on-going revenue stream so they have to sell more and more hardware to get revenue and get the additional premium subscribers.
Don't get me wrong, I like ooma and the service has been great. I just don't want to pick up the phone one day and my ooma dial tone has gone mute.

The hardware won't last forever, so eventually Ooma's customers will need to replace their device with a new one.

The Hub has been supplanted by the Telo as the latest hardware after only about 2 years. In another 2 or 3 years, they'll probably have even newer hardware. Some customers will want to update to the newest hardware to get the newest features.

You have a valid concern but I would not really worry too much. Ooma does seem very well funded for a startup. One thing to also note is that if there were issues with the company, you would be given time to port your number over to another provider. This has happened in the past to other VOIP providers and people were given time to leave the service. That being said if you stick around till the very end and ignore any possible warning signs then yes you could possibly lose your number as who knows how long it would take to reclaim a number from a company that went belly up. More than likely if there were issues Ooma would be sold to another provider and they would possibly change the terms of service (start charging per month most likely) but in this case you would also have time to leave if you did not agree to the new service terms.

Remember that people have long held numbers that they depend on for personal and business reasons. Going dark one day for good with little to no warning would not exactly be the smartest thing in the world for anyone to do.

I wouldn't exactly call it a ponzi scheme. They're not paying out money to investors or claiming a specific return on investment. The buzzword these days is that it's a 'freemium' business model. Free service with a paid premium service to draw the user base into.

Before Ooma received VC funding, there needed to be quite a bit of due diligence on their biz plan. They estimated conversion rates to premium, revenue and gross margin from hardware sales, costs per user, % of heavy demand users, % of low demand uesrs, infrastructure costs, etc. They made all sorts of pretty excel graphs and charts showing that the biz will work. They've had enough investors that if the model didn't work, someone would have thrown up a red flag. That certainly doesn't mean it will work, it all goes into execution and how the assumptions hold. Some of the original assumptions didn't, and they've changed the model.

You can get a rough idea on what it takes to support a customer by reading the Vonage 10K and 10Q reports. They're a public company, so they can't hide much. When I looked at Ooma before deciding to buy, it made sense to me, though i don't know what the Ooma assumptions are and what their actual biz model says.

...alan

AZGuyJoe wrote:Not the issue. I'm looking out a bit more long term than Costco's return window.
Thanks.

Don't worry!
There are a lot of "economy" phone services out there... (DIDs)... dozens of them; and i am sure there will also be new ones in the future!
Take a look here:
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/VOIP ... esidential

You might not get all that Ooma has to offer... but you can call all you want and then some, for $10 or less a month!
So, enjoy Ooma while it lasts... there is nothing to fear!
.

alancommike wrote: though i don't know what the Ooma assumptions are and what their actual biz model says.

Here I though you were going to post those pretty excel graphs!