Ooma Forums

Davesworld, thanks for the great insight. Sounds like you are running an outfit that can rival the NSA

I don't know all the technical mumbo jumbo VoIP involves. However, I do know that my Hub has been very reliable and provides excellent voice quality calls no matter where I call.

Before coming to Ooma, I was with Verizon and used calling cards to call overseas. After coming to Ooma, I do not miss the old way at all; Ooma has been serving me very well.

lbmofo wrote:Davesworld, thanks for the great insight. Sounds like you are running an outfit that can rival the NSA

I don't know all the technical mumbo jumbo VoIP involves. However, I do know that my Hub has been very reliable and provides excellent voice quality calls no matter where I call.

Before coming to Ooma, I was with Verizon and used calling cards to call overseas. After coming to Ooma, I do not miss the old way at all; Ooma has been serving me very well.

Calling cards are such a pain to use. In the 80's when I was an Airman stationed overseas they were great but now, not so much. Had it been today I would probably have had a voip setup or cell phone or both just as I do now. I originally got the HUB to send to someone overseas as the iLBC codec would probably give better quality under the internet conditions that the people I was going to send it to actually have.

WayneDsr wrote:The telo has had [its] growing pains, but you can't beat the quality of the call.
Wayne

Can't beat the quality? Every other kind of phone I have ever used (except cell phones, which often are horrible too) has beaten the quality of Telo. It beat it by not having the delay (latency) that makes conversation so unnatural. It beat it by not having the echo that makes talking so often difficult. It beat it by simply always working. Ooma's only advantage is the low monthly cost, which actually makes Ooma worthwhile for me; but as an electronics design engineer and (later) software consultant I am appalled by what I see.

The echo is particularly bad. I once designed and built a delayed-auditory-feedback device at the request of a friend, a special-education professor who used it in lectures/demonstrations to show the way delayed auditory feedback can make the most articulate speaker unable to talk at all. It worked, too. Feeding a person's own speech back into his ears with about 250 milliseconds delay renders most people utterly tongue-tied. Nowadays you don't need my special equipment for that -- all you need is Telo!

This, I suppose, is progress.
.

Well ibmofo, we spent 4 hours last night trying to install the new AT&T modem/router we happened to have. The numbers for it would not be accepted no matter what we tried.
SO, this morning went to Best Buy & bought a Netgear Wireless Modem/Router spending another $122. Have been trying to install this since 10:10 this morning, it's now 12:30pm and it will not work. Says I have to connect an Ethernet cable from the device to my computer. Since I have wireless internet & the modem/router are 20 feet apart, can't be done. Also says it's installed & that I'm connected to Internet but I'm not.
Now, someone who is more computer literate than we are just might think this is no big deal & may be able to fix this in 1/10th the time we've spent on it, but we cannot. (While many of you have grown up with computers, I remember mailing letters using a 3 cent stamp.) I am in tears, & finally got my old AT&T box re-connected so I could get online & have a phone. Again, I am sorry to lose the Ooma benefits, but with all I have to deal with already on a daily basis, my sanity is worth way more than $30 per month. It will still be a bit before our change as I have to play catch-up to make up the time I've wasted on the new modem & it's Christmas. ibmofo, I DO appreciate your idea & your willingness to help. Thank-you!!

nn5i wrote:

WayneDsr wrote:The telo has had [its] growing pains, but you can't beat the quality of the call.
Wayne

Can't beat the quality? Every other kind of phone I have ever used (except cell phones, which often are horrible too) has beaten the quality of Telo. It beat it by not having the delay (latency) that makes conversation so unnatural. It beat it by not having the echo that makes talking so often difficult. It beat it by simply always working. Ooma's only advantage is the low monthly cost, which actually makes Ooma worthwhile for me; but as an electronics design engineer and (later) software consultant I am appalled by what I see.

The echo is particularly bad. I once designed and built a delayed-auditory-feedback device at the request of a friend, a special-education professor who used it in lectures/demonstrations to show the way delayed auditory feedback can make the most articulate speaker unable to talk at all. It worked, too. Feeding a person's own speech back into his ears with about 250 milliseconds delay renders most people utterly tongue-tied. Nowadays you don't need my special equipment for that -- all you need is Telo!

This, I suppose, is progress.



.

Wow, too bad. I can honestly say I have no audio problems at all. I have a set of panasonic cordless phones that sound great, but I prefer the sound of the Telo handsets. I must be very lucky, cause every call is 100%, no lie.

Wayne

huggybear wrote:Well ibmofo, we spent 4 hours last night trying to install the new AT&T modem/router we happened to have. The numbers for it would not be accepted no matter what we tried.
SO, this morning went to Best Buy & bought a Netgear Wireless Modem/Router spending another $122. Have been trying to install this since 10:10 this morning, it's now 12:30pm and it will not work. Says I have to connect an Ethernet cable from the device to my computer. Since I have wireless internet & the modem/router are 20 feet apart, can't be done. Also says it's installed & that I'm connected to Internet but I'm not.
Now, someone who is more computer literate than we are just might think this is no big deal & may be able to fix this in 1/10th the time we've spent on it, but we cannot. (While many of you have grown up with computers, I remember mailing letters using a 3 cent stamp.) I am in tears, & finally got my old AT&T box re-connected so I could get online & have a phone. Again, I am sorry to lose the Ooma benefits, but with all I have to deal with already on a daily basis, my sanity is worth way more than $30 per month. It will still be a bit before our change as I have to play catch-up to make up the time I've wasted on the new modem & it's Christmas. ibmofo, I DO appreciate your idea & your willingness to help. Thank-you!!

huggybear, when you install a new modem, you'd need to call your internet service provider and have them provision your new device.

lbmofo wrote:huggybear, when you install a new modem, you'd need to call your internet service provider and have them provision your new device.

That's sound advice; the ISP must know the information printed on the label of the modem (usually the MAC address). You can't simply buy a new modem and plug it in. Well, you can, but it won't work.

Aside from being sound advice, though, it makes my teeth itch. When did provision become a verb with this meaning? From the actual verb provide we get the verb provision, which is the act of providing, or by extension (and almost always in the plural) the thing provided. Thus when one provides food, the culinary items provided are provisions, and among those whose language skills are deficient one has provisioned the recipient, which is awkward enough. But when one registers the hardware address of a device, one is not providing anything to the device; similarly, in another usage I have recoiled at, when one distributes a name-and-number correspondence among caller-ID data bases, calling it provisioning is execrable English. Alas, many engineers lack language skills.

nn5i wrote:But when one registers the hardware address of a device, one is not providing anything to the device.

Sure they are.
They transmit a file to the modem to configure it to match the service for which the owner is paying.

See, that's where I fail. I had No idea I had to call anyone. I tried to use the suggestion & i didn't work. My husband returned the modem/router about an hour ago. You all know so much about this stuff & I'm the one who used to use 3 cent stamps.
Thanks again so much anyway, for trying to help me.

huggybear, when you are up to it, give it another try; maybe on a weekday when the internet service provider has more robust phone support.