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Ooma from Europe

Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 8:55 am
by atici
On the ooma site there's the following information:
Does your old college roommate live in England? Does your evil twin live in Romania? Just buy an ooma system and send it to your friends and family anywhere in the world and have them activate it with a US phone number. This turns expensive international calls into free local US calls.*
I'd like to try this out in Europe but I have several concerns:
  • Is there an 220v ooma adapter one could purchase?
  • How much would the ping response time matter? Is there a ooma host I should check the response time against?
Thanks.

Re: Ooma from Europe

Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 5:52 pm
by Dennis P
Sorry, there is no 220V power supply that we've qualified with the product. Your best bet is to use it with a transformer to step up/down the voltage. While you could purchase a third-party power supply as long as the polarity, voltage, and current specs matched, it would void the warranty and safety testing that has been done on the product.

Ping response should not matter too much as long as you are calling between Europe and the US. The majority of the latency will be caused by physical distance (geography), and that delay is unavoidable, even with traditional phone calls. As such, the delay should not be any worse then what you were already used to when talking to Europe. If you are just curious about the delay, you can ping our web server, which resides in the same facility as the other servers that process voice calls.

I have family that uses the ooma box overseas and the quality is very good. I'll also note that last we checked, there were ooma boxes in use in 30+ different countries.

Re: Ooma from Europe

Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 7:56 am
by atici
Thanks Dennis. I will set up the ooma unit with a step down converter approved for continuous use then. Does the ooma hub consume more than 20 watts?

I checked the connection characteristics and a roundtrip ping takes about 220ms but the following site reports low jitter (<1ms) and no packet loss.
http://myvoipspeed.visualware.com/index.html

Does ooma employ any jitter correction via packet cache?

Re: Ooma from Europe

Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 9:18 am
by Dennis P
The ooma device consumes less than 15 watts peak, usually much less, so you should be good.

And yes, we do have a dynamic "jitter buffer" to compensate for the unavoidable jitter you will see on the Internet.

Re: Ooma from Europe

Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 10:25 am
by theoski
Did anyone find a suitable ac adapter for 220/230v for ooma?

Re: Ooma from Europe

Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 10:57 am
by theoski
I was actually looking at this but cant see polarity.

http://www.amamax.com/fsh1210swpoa.html

Re: Ooma from Europe

Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 1:26 pm
by Colanth
New poster - not new to electronics, phones or computers.

If the adapter doesn't specify, it's almost guaranteed to be center-positive, and that's what the hub wants. (There's just about nothing made these days that requires center-negative.)

Al

And where's my memo been? I've been paying Verizon $61/month for this service. Same complaint I've seen here a few times - why didn't I do this long ago? Someone should have kick-started me.

Re: Ooma from Europe

Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 1:44 pm
by southsound
Colanth wrote:New poster - not new to electronics, phones or computers.
. . . . . .
And where's my memo been? I've been paying Verizon $61/month for this service. Same complaint I've seen here a few times - why didn't I do this long ago? Someone should have kick-started me.
Wecome to the ooma family. I think a lot of us have the rear view mirror visions of dollars being flushed, but at least you're here now!

Different product, same procrastination: It took me 10 years of Verizon Wireless (AirTouch before the name change) to figure out that if the phone didn't work at my house it was not a good choice for me. Last year I went with Net10 and my cell phone costs have gone from $45.00 to $5.50 per month. I wasn't quite so lax with ooma - as soon as DSL was available on our island my order was in to Costco. No looking back this time!

I think you will find your ooma system a real treat - and visit the board often to share your experiences and expertise!

Re: Ooma from Europe

Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 1:48 pm
by Colanth
Thanks for the welcome, and I sure will be around.

I wish I could use Net10 - looks cheap - but my wife needs an internet browser in her phone and they don't seem to have full data service. Well, saving $53/month isn't bad either.

Re: Ooma from Europe

Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 4:29 pm
by bw1
southsound wrote: Last year I went with Net10 and my cell phone costs have gone from $45.00 to $5.50 per month.
How do you get Net10 down to $5.50 per month? Based on everything I've read and their prepaid cards on their site, you would have to add cards every 2-4 months that are $30 - $60, which works out to $15 per month minimum.