Ooma Outage : Cloud Failure Plus DDoS Attack

Ooma Outage : Cloud Failure Plus DDoS Attack http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/

Dual failures, one related to a power failure at a datacenter and the other a pure DDoS attack on Ooma's corporate site, kept Ooma users without a service and without a way to look up what is the matter with the service.

Even though Ooma says it was a DDoS attack, it could be all the Ooma customers trying to access the corporate may have caused what is explained as a DDoS attack. For phone company, actually a VoIP company a 3 hour outage might be bigger than AT&T neighbor digging out a trench cutting a cable and causing a six hour outage.. Because AT&T cable cut will be localized issue while Ooma's VoIP trouble was or will be widespread from east coast to west coast and the publicity even larger. Also every Ooma customer are on the internet and the first thing they will do is try and access Ooma site to find a solution to trouble. So simply it looks like Ooma was not ready or at least did not expect a bigger portion of their customers coming to their site.



But to have your at a data center with dubious backup power system is Ooma's fault. Having a website that is not capable to handle few thousand user rush is also a fault of Ooma. So I think Ooma should invest a bit on hosting their web site as well as VoIP servers. Scalability is the word Ooma. Because customers want continuous service, not an explanation about how the service failed.

I too did have a rush of people coming over to this humble blog, because we wrote about an earlier Ooma failure or an issue. "Ooma Phone Service Goes Down And Up" people looking for a solution for Ooma clout failure were ended up coming here.

New Mobile App Calling Plan From Ooma Allows You To Call From iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Ooma Mobile App Calling Plan http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/
Ooma, the company that reminds me of my Grandma, has introduced a new Mobile App Calling Plan for Ooma users. Ooma users enjoy free, unlimited local and long distance calling in US with onetime payment of hardware, like Ooma Telo. International calls are also very economical, less than a penny for most countries.
The Ooma purevoice is supposed to be much clearer than other VoIP Services in voice quality.
The new plan for mobile applications ets Ooma customers make U.S. and international calls from their iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Phone calls made using the Ooma Mobile application are transmitted through the Internet connection of your device (either Wi-Fi or 3G) so you do not need or use minutes from a cellular voice plan.
With the mobile calling plan;

- Save on minutes, money by shifting your minutes to Ooma Mobile and call over Wi-Fi or 3G
- Save up to 90% on international calls using your Ooma prepaid account or international calling plan
- No coverage, no problem: Avoid roaming charges for phone calls when you have access to Wi-Fi - perfect when traveling abroad
- Keep your caller-ID: Calls made using Ooma Mobile show the caller-ID of your Ooma account
- Conserve bandwidth: Reduce 3G bandwidth usage by up to 60% when making a call with Ooma PureVoice technology
- Call from your iPod/iPad: Ooma Mobile transforms your iPad and iPod touch into a phone
- Free calling to Ooma subscribers: Call any Ooma phone number and talk for as long as you want

The Ooma Mobile calling plan allows users to talk for 1,000 minutes for less than $5 per month. Ooma Premier subscribers still have the bonus of 250 free minutes of U.S. calling every month. If you are a Ooma customer, you can enroll via the “My Ooma” area of www.ooma.com

Ooma Telo Debuts With Free US Calls

Ooma Telo
Ooma has released the new Ooma Telo, the new phone system superceeding Ooma Hub and available to purchase from online as well as retail shopping locations.
The new version of the Ooma system offers Free US calling (After initial cost of the system) caller ID, Call waiting, 911 service as well as improved call quality.

“It’s time for consumers to expect more from their home phone and finally disassociate phone service from expensive phone carriers. The proliferation of broadband was the first step to delivering phone service over the Internet. Ooma takes it to the next level by providing free U.S. calling with outstanding call quality and no monthly fees or contracts,” said Eric Stang, CEO of Ooma, “The Ooma Telo is our latest in a portfolio of products designed to expand home phone service into an interactive and unified home communication platform.”

Ooma Telo also offers DECT 6.0 technology to take advantage of the future release of the Ooma Telo Handset. Ooma Telo comes with a 60-day free trial of Ooma Premier™, a bundle of advanced calling features that further extends the functionality of the Ooma system.

The Ooma Telo is available at more than 1,200 retail locations including: Best Buy, Datavision, Fry’s Electronics, J&R, Micro Center, and leading online destinations including Amazon, BestBuy.com, Buy.com, Costco.com, Dell.com, JandR.com, NewEgg.com, OfficeDepot.com, PC Mall, Provantage, Shop Harmony, Staples.com, Sears.com Target.com, Tiger Direct, and Walmart.com.
Pricing and Taxes
Ooma Telo retails for $249.99. Optional Ooma Premier costs $9.99 per month. Sign up for one year of Ooma Premier and receive a free Ooma Telo Handset (a $49.99 value) or free number porting (a $39.99 value). After the first year of ownership, Ooma Telo users will be charged an annual regulatory recovery fee of $11.75 to cover taxes, regulatory recovery fees and other costs.
Ooma 

ooma Hub and Scout Selected As Innovation Award Winner In The VoIP Category By Network Products Guide 2009

Ooma System

Palo Alto, Calif — June 3, 2009 — Ooma announced today that Network Products Guide, the industry’s leading publication on information technologies and solutions, has named the ooma Hub and Scout a winner of the 2009 Product Innovation Award. This annually venerated award recognizes and honors vendors from all over the world with innovative and ground-breaking products that are bringing essential and incremental changes and are setting the bar higher for others in all areas of information technology.

ooma is an innovative phone service which combines with a broadband Internet connection and home phones to provide incredible cost savings and advanced telephony features through exceptional VoIP technology. The ooma Hub is a one-time purchase eliminating monthly phone bills with free calls within the U.S. and low international rates. The ooma Hub’s high-performance Linux system enables a fully networked home by connecting the Internet, home phone and cell phone into one system. The ooma Scout extends the benefits of the ooma system to additional phone jacks in the home. To read more about this product innovation, please visit www.networkproductsguide.com/innovations/

“Innovation is clearly an important factor for greater success and has the most impact on staying competitive," says Rake Narang, editor-in-chief of Network Products Guide. “Innovative products such as the ooma Hub and Scout bring significant improvements in home phone communication through advanced telephony features and networking services.”

“Network Products Guide’s recognition of ooma Hub and Scout further validates ooma’s excellence-in-class and dedication to innovation” said Eric Stang, Chief Executive Officer at ooma. “We are thrilled to receive this honor and remain committed to providing innovative technology for the benefit of our customers – superior call quality and reliability while saving money by eliminating monthly home phone bills.”

Ooma Press Release.

Tags: Ooma scout, Ooma hub, VoIP, Network Products Guide

Ooma Phone Service Goes Down And Up

Ooma Down
UPDATE:
Ooma has announced that the service failure due to the their internet service provider and the system is back up. They also requested to reboot your Ooma hub;
"As of 5PM, most service has been fully restored. Some Hubs may not recover automatically in an expedient manner - if your ooma service is still down, please reboot your ooma Hub. Unplug power from the back of the device, wait one minute and then plug the power back in. The ooma Hub may need to download a software update, but it should go into service shortly thereafter."

Ooma Phone service based in Palo Alto, went down about 11:00 AM and remained down until late afternoon. The service was partially available at 5:00 PM.
Ooma improved it's services and gained much acceptance lately. The device is offered at BestBuy and tech stores like Fry's and Micro center. It was also noted when it added extensions for Google Voice recently. (Thanks to GoogleVoice, we were able to route our phone numbers to other phones)
The internet phone service (IP Telephony) provider has lately been releasing it's performances and targets for future.
We Use the service and have been quite happy with it!, except today!

Ooma's announcement regarding the service outage

Tags: Ooma, Google Voice, Google Voice Extensions, Ooma hub

Google Voice And Asterisk Integration

Googlified Messaging
When you thought Nerd Vittles (Ward Mundy) has surprised you enough, he comes up with another one. This time he is putting ideas into our heads with his recipes for the Asterisk and Google Voice integration. I have already had my GrandCentral number associated with my Asterisk installationS, (yes I have a quite a few Asterisk servers running). I have not been doing much on the Google Voice side of it yet. But after all the Google Voice excitement, subsequent OOMA Plus Google Voice(GVE) and this recipe now, I have no excuse.

If you are looking to get your voicemails trnscribed and emailed (I just get my grandcentral voicemail emailed without transcription) and wring Google Voice and FreePBX (Asterisk) get more out of both, I think Nerds article Googlified Messaging, is a good read.
It is bit technical but easy to follow as most Nerd Vittles article. But if you think you need a laugh after all those technical wrangling you can read some transcribed messages (tests conducted by usesrs like me) you can do it here.

Tags: Google Voice, Asterisk, FreePBX, Ooma, Asterisk, FreePBX, Googlified Messaging, Nerd Vittles

Ooma Gives Google Voice Extensions.

http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/
When I was settling down with Google Voice, thinking what more would I want, Ooma gives me a load of stuuf that I want. Reading about Ooma Premier's Google Voice extensions (GVE) made me smile and think A lot more I could do with Google Voice and Ooma.
I already got Google Voice (as a former Grandcentral User) and we are concidering to Test out Ooma in one of our offices, a office that I frquent a lot. We will pick up one of these Ooma (Feel like I am calling out to Grand Mother).
So what are these Google Voice Extensions? there a lot of them but here are some I got from the Ooma press release;

ooma GVE Outbound Caller ID Integration
ooma Premier Google Voice Extensions allows ooma users to display their Google Voice caller ID on outbound calls from ooma systems with no need to dial additional call prompts or 20 digit phone numbers.

ooma GVE SMS text integration
With ooma Telo™ handsets (available this coming August), Google Voice SMS messages may be displayed on the handsets in the home, not just on a cell phone.

ooma GVE Home Phone Integration
ooma Premier Google Voice Extensions allows calls sent to an ooma home phone to be forwarded directly to a Google Voice number for routing just as if the call were originally directed to a Google Voice number. This overcomes the limitation of not being able to port phone numbers to the Google Voice service. This is made possible by the patent-pending Instant Second Line™ feature found in ooma Premier.

ooma GVE Call Announce
In households where multiple Google Voice accounts exist, ooma Premier Google Voice Extensions can allow for different Google Voice accounts to forward calls directly to specific handsets in a home. The GVE Call Announce feature will also voice an announcement of who in the household the call is intended based on which Google Voice account originated the call.

ooma GVE Listen In feature
ooma Premier Google Voice extensions allows a user at home to monitor and intercept a voicemail as it is being left without dialing any additional call prompts.

ooma GVE One Touch Voice Mail
ooma Premier Google Voice Extensions allows ooma users to access their Google Voice mailbox with a single touch of a button on an ooma Hub, Scout, or Telo handset. This eliminates the need to dial a Google Voice number and then password to gain access to voice mail.

This really seem to add value both to Ooma and Google Voice. Good work Ooma. For more information, go to www.ooma.com or blog.ooma.com.

Tags: Google Voice, Google Voice Extensions, Ooma, GVE

Ooma Systems Available In Best Buy Stores Nation Wide.

We have written about Ooma before but have not had a chance to test the system. The system seem to be catching on as there is no recurring charges to the users. As the one time cost system that operates over your your broadband connection is said to greatly reduce your monthly phone costs. You can find more information on Ooma system by following the links below.

Following is the press release by Ooma regarding Best Buy Retail Space expansion;

Palo Alto, Calif. — January 5, 2009 — ooma, Inc. today announced that it has expanded its retail partnership with Best Buy to offer the ooma system nationwide in all 1,010 Best Buy stores. Best Buy is a multinational retailer of technology and entertainment products and services with a commitment to growth and innovation.

“ooma experienced an amazing amount of consumer adoption and awareness following our initial retail program with Best Buy in 250 retail locations and online at BestBuy.com,” said Aaron Duran, VP of Retail Sales at ooma. “We are excited to grow our footprint in the appropriate retail channels and believe our expanded partnership with Best Buy will allow more consumers to see the compelling value proposition that ooma offers its users.”

An ooma system consists of the ooma Hub™ connected to a broadband connection and a primary phone. The ooma Scout device extends the benefits of the ooma system to additional phone jacks in the home. ooma Core is a $249.99 hardware bundle that includes ooma Hub and ooma Scout. ooma Premier is an optional service option for the ooma Core bundle and costs $12.99 per month or $99.99 per year.

The current ooma system is available in all Best Buy stores and at BestBuy.com. For a limited time, ooma is offering even bigger savings for international callers. Purchase and activate an ooma system from Best Buy or any authorized ooma reseller and get $50 of international calling through January 31, 2009. For details, visit www.ooma.com/savings.

Tags: P2P VoIP, Ooma, BestBuy, ooma Hub, ooma Scout, ooma Core

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