One of the most interesting discussions not online has been going on back channel by the VoIP bloggers about ooma with some of the better minds taking what’s being written and then writing posts around it.
For a lot of reason beyond him being a client and friend I’m in David Beckemeyer’s camp on this one and really find that his PhoneGnome solution to be something that has to be weighed against ooma.
While CallVantage and Earthlink TrueVoice power four lines at the house, the service that is being used to provide my home phone service is AT&T’s POTS service married with PhoneGnome. If I didn’t work out of the house and didn’t have the need for additional lines PhoneGnome gives me most of what I need, the one exception is CallVantage conference bridging, but I can make up for that with Gaboogie.
Helene has a PhoneGnome at home so our nightly calls tend to go Gnome to Gnome when she’s in Sacramento and I’m in Solana Beach/Del Mar. Cost is really zero. When I make Long Distance Calls over the PhoneGnome they go very reliably over Junction Networks and have for almost two years now at pennies. I think my monthly bill over JN is under $5.00 on average, proving the point that David and the ooma folks are making about VoIP still costing more than it has to be.
Granted I have more phone services in the house than most ever need. WiFi phones have Broadvoice and Gizmo Project working too but I could easily tie the WiFi phone into PhoneGnome as David made it SIP from the start. I can then load in my PhoneGnome SIP credentials and have the PhoneGnome number with me all the time. Using GrandCentral inbound to the PhoneGnome gives me the luxury of not having to tell people which number to call. Now if only I could alias the outbound ala TalkPlus to make it look like my GrandCentral number….and I’d be all set.