I have had an Ojo, Motorola’s Video Phone here at the house waiting to be hooked up. The problem had been that in order to use it, one needs both a phone line and a broadband connection versus the Packet8 video VoIP phone that needs only the latter.
First problem. My house’s phone jacks and ethernet jacks are in two different places in every room of the house. Why? The home, now 30 years old was wired at least three time. First by the builders, then by the cable company, and then again by yours truly to put RJ-45’s in every room of the house as back up to the wireless network.
Since the bulk of my phones are wireless anyway I never really had this problem. Even the PhoneGnome, which is so small and tucks neatly away with wires hidden along the baseboard never had this issue. But Ojo needs to be on a desk, in plain sight, so in my new office it went.
First problem. I need to run cords in two direction. Instead of being a VoIP service, Ojo needs PSTN. Thankfully I still have a PSTN line or two in the house. Oh, now I need another hub or switch as multiple devices need multiple outlets and my home office only has two ethernet ports, one on each side of the room.
Then I hooked it up and had to call someone to activate it. Problem three. Why does it need human involvement. Problem four arose next. It seems someone assigned it a different PSTN number than the one I provided them, reversing two digits. Now I can’t make any changes unless I call the press person. It also means the second Ojo, installed in my fiancee’s house has no one to talk to.
Candidly, this is torture. When I compare the experience of CallVantage, Vonage, Packet8 this is nowhere nearly as seemless. When I think about how easy PhoneGnome’s set up is —just plug it in–, I have to laugh.
But I’m more upset. You see at CES last January when I first saw the Ojo and demonstrated the unit to me in the press room I was blown away. The quality was super and the voice was clear as a regular phone line. No one said they were using PSTN, so of course it sounded great and the 30 fps video was going to work.
So at some point this week, in my free moments I’ll get to someone at Motorola and solve the number issue and hopefully have it up and running. But as of now, Ojo falls into the Plug and Pray category of VoIP devices, not simple Plug and Play.