lbmofo wrote:Duffy, I wouldn't worry about the health of Ooma. Even if a VoIP company folds, customers are allowed a window to port their numbers out to another company (example Sun Rocket).
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sunrocket is not the ideal example.. regulators had to get involved for many to port their numbers and for some, it took several weeks to several months to port out... many of whom went to Vonage while they were the cheapest alternative at the time (and had a decent track record of stability). vonage is no longer cheap, infact they're in some cases MORE than cableco voip service when you factor in taxes & fees.
number porting is much more evolved probably BECAUSE of the demise of sunrocket that things SHOULD go much smoother than in the past. please read the about page of NPAC; number portability administration center, they are part of the process and probably at least in part WHY it costs $40 to transition a number. while they're probably not happy about having responsibility to transition millions of numbers virtually overnight.. they most likely have 'disaster contingency plans' in place for the folding of voip companies. http://www.npac.com/the-npac/about
as you can see, the federal gov't had it's hand in ripping this power from telcos decades ago when cablecos got into the telecom business, so it's quite natural to deal with 3rd party (non-telecom) vendors these days.
Ooma will likely be around for quite a while.. voip companies with any sort of good reputation are not fly-by-nights and have doomsday plans should the company go belly-up.. surviving the credit crunch of 2007-2009 was a good indicator of a stress test.. many famous companies got dessimated when credit dried up because their wealth DEPENDED upon credit and revenue from paying customers. The ooma business model is much more lean and mean-- afterall they sell a product and offer free calling.
Try buying a twinkie today.. for lots of tomorrows, OOMA will be making and recieving calls.. The longer Ooma survives & grows it's customer base, the more it's in the best interest of the federal government to see that they survive rather than have NPAC deal with millions of irate phone customers who may have to resort to writing nasty letters to congress people.