Telo - 15 minute boot time

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The mJ adapter is a simple one-trick pony and continuously draws just 1 watt. Being super-green and as well an OhmConnect participant, I carefully went through the house checking for "invisible" parasitic loads, which add up. Then I get this Ooma doodad.

For 10 years before I got fiber, I used the mJ reliably with Comcast and with SC Mountains outages as well as a huge variety of connected equipment. No issues there. Ooma just seems to be a complex flaky system concept.

I'm also tired of the Ooma sales pitch nagging. Ooma is a NYSE stock company and thus attends to maximizing shareholder value. Ooma's IPO was on 7/17/2015 for $13. Today's share price was $15.22, a jump of only 17% in 8 years. The pressure is on for cash flow. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/OOMA/

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At 630 this morning (7/14), my Ooma took 4:29 to awaken from its overnight sleep. That's the normal minimum. Later in the day, it takes 2-3 times as long to restart - range is 9:05 - 14:33. My magicJack adapter restarts in seconds no matter what time of day.

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Today from 5-9pm I did an OhmConnect "2X surge" house power shutdown, except for the fiber broadband which must stay up the entire time. When I restored power at 9:04pm, the mJ adapter started in seconds as usual, but the Ooma took the longest ever to restart - 27:07. It was only 4:29 at 630 this morning. Flaky system!

This was a most fitting sendoff since my new Voiply kit is tracked to arrive tomorrow. I'll get to compare that adapter to the Ooma and the mJ.

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OBSERVATION see what you think:
I've done 15 power-off restarts with my Telo 2 in 10 days. Most are due to the nightly equipment shutdown, some reboot time tests, and as well periodic OhmConnect shutdowns. I propose that the Telo 2 file system eventually gets damaged in some way, requiring a factory reset. It can only do so many power-off restarts before a reset is inevitably required. There was no initial warning about this in the literature. This would be my second reset.

Unfortunately, my Telo 2 was initially located in a less visible location, and I never noticed the long restarts in the morning IT startup at 6am or so. Whod'a thunk! Did not anticipate this flaky system in time to return the Ooma box for a refund. Only when the Telo started spontaneously shutting down in midday did I move it to a more visible location.

For being inevitably required, the two Ooma factory reset multi-step procedures are both too messy-complicated. The Voiply adapter setup instructions for instance tell you to simply stick a paper clip end in a small hole near the cable jacks. They even show a picture. Simple typical equipment reset procedure.

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My new (free) Voiply "Grandstream" adapter by comparison took exactly 1:07 mins to start in each of 3 midday trials. It draws 0 watts (unmeasurable) when inactive and 1 watt when active in a call. It's about 3 in. square/1 in. thick. Unlike the warm Ooma box, it's stone cold to the touch. It has been assigned my not-yet-ported number and gives CID name and that number for outbound calls. Inbound won't work until my Ooma number is ported. We'll see how that goes.

[Robek]

3 watts seems negligible when compared to, (for example), 2x8.5-watt LED light bulbs, a 45-watt room fan, a dozen or so network/household appliances, or the 1,400+-watt L1 charger for an electric vehicle. How much of that parasitic 3 watts is from the DC power supply itself, when unplugged from the Telo?

Instead of speculating about damaged file systems or flipped bits, has anyone tried to contact Ooma support, and ask them what might be causing the 15+ minute boot time? If so, then what did they say? Perhaps some simple adjustment of an obscure router, wifi, or Telo setting could have resolved the issue.

The Voiply advertised monthly cost is closer to $12/month with the annual plan, including taxes and fees. Their "free" international plan for landlines in 50 countries may not be as free as they claim; check their rates with specific numbers to be sure.

The Voiply adapter does not provide a VPN tunnel, but they do recommend one, to avoid issues with privacy, security, technical problems related to "SIP ALG" or "CGNAT", etc. They also sell a travel router (separately) to provide a VPN, with an advertised power consumption of "less than 6 watts".

The Ooma dashboard says I've saved $451 since April 2022.

The Ooma dashboard just multiplies the number of months elapsed with the "Prior Phone Bill", and subtracts the "Initial Purchase". To get a better estimate, adjust the "Prior phone bill" to calculate the monthly difference between the previous provider and Ooma, and adjust the "Initial Purchase" to cover actual purchases.

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I combed the house for parasitic power losses. There must've been 50 wall warts at one time. The parasitic losses add up. 3 watts is 26.4 kWh a year. I've had a 148x Diamond streak with OhmConnect by paying attention to such little details. I'm also very "green" in general with my resource usage and end up with tiny utility bills compared to my friends and neighbors. The Ooma power supply draws zero watts when disconnected. The Ooma box runs rather warm to the touch, a bad sign.

The boot time is always at least 4:30 compared to a few seconds with magicJack and 1:08 Voiply. I haven't seen any explanations anywhere for the slow booting. The ~4:30 time is commonly reported. As well, I've noticed a performance decline after too many power-off restarts. I've documented this in my recent posts. Factory resetting the Ooma is a pain. Getting into a troubleshooting match with Ooma support over this looks like a big pain with little chance of success.

As long as I can call friends in Canada from California, I'm happy. Can do this with mJ and my Google Fi cell but not the Ooma. I now can with Voiply as well.

As for cost, the mJ is a total of $2.16/month complete, with a 5 year plan ($130) which I do. The Voiply annual plan is $11.50/month complete. I used to have 2 mJ lines and really saved big in that case. Thought I'd see what other voip providers offer. I struck out big with Ooma for starters.

It's annoying that I could've bought an Ooma Telo 2 on eBay for as little as $20 instead of $100 from Amazon. I won't put mine on eBay because there are now 78 currently listed for sale/bid! Knowing that the box is de facto defective, I can't unload it on friends (to whom I would just recommend mJ). The good news is that by chance, I got a terrifically classy phone number from Ooma that used to belong to a business. I'm porting that to Voiply for free, no extra charge. Going the other way to Ooma would cost $40. To hell with that.

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As for VPN on voip, if I were running a business, were a government agency, or were working remotely, I'd want a VPN function. My Google Fi cell sets a VPN for calls, and that's the most frequently used phone anyway.

One of the more charming unsung features of mJ is that when I'm in Canada, I can call back to the US with the mJ Android app for free. I discovered that accidentally. It has my mJ home number, so to others it's as if I were home in California.

[ToastyNerd]

I get between 1 and 15 minutes boot time.

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In what I guess will be the final post (Ooma account canceled today), I did a total of 24 Ooma power-off restarts from 7/6-7/20 at random times of day after my second factory reset on 7/5. The restart time range was 4:14 - 27:07 mins. with an average of 8:36 mins.. Connectivity was always 1Gbps fiber. MagicJack time restart was consistently 17 secs. while Vioply always clocked in at 1:08 mins.

Today my Ooma number ported to Vioply after 8 days. Vioply actively tracked the process by email and text.

I called to cancel my Ooma account, engaging with the most aggressive customer retention rep ever! She offered killer deals, but I had to keep reminding her my Ooma number was ported and gone. They're evidently quite desperate to keep up the head count.