You may recall that I recently bought an Ooma VoIP Telephone system since it offers me unlimited phone service for an upfront price of about $200. Porting your landline phone number over to Ooma costs $40, but can be worth it for some folks. (It’s also free with a 1-year $99 subscription to Ooma Premier service, which includes a second phone number.)
Although Ooma warns that it can take up to 4-6 weeks, the results are highly dependent on your local telephone company. I thought I would share the timeline of a friend’s successful port which took 19 days.
Day 1 – Filled out port request online.
Day 3 – Faxed/e-mailed in required paperwork, which required some signatures and a copy of recent phone bill.
Day 9 – Received the following e-mail from Ooma. Emphasis is mine.
You’ve recently requested your phone number to be ported to ooma. We have submitted all of the information you provided to your current Carrier and are still awaiting confirmation. We will notify you via email once we have confirmation of the actual completion date.
Please keep in mind that if you have DSL on the same number that you requested to port, you will lose your internet connection when your number is ported. ooma will not work without a broadband connection, so this is a friendly reminder to insure you do not experience down time.
Day 12 – Another e-mail from Ooma.
You’ve recently requested your phone number to be ported to Ooma. The expected completion date of your request is scheduled for 12/29/09 [Day 19].
Day 19 – Final e-mail from Ooma.
Thank you for placing your order with ooma, your porting request has been completed. Please reboot your ooma hub so your account will be updated with this number. You may also contact your local carrier to cancel your account with them.
As promised, on Day 19, the regular landline phone went dead. If you called it, it said “This number is no longer in service.” But after rebooting the Ooma unit, all calls were immediately picked up by the new Ooma line. After calling the telephone company to cancel, they said that everything was already terminated and that the final bill would come in shortly. I guess since the number was already gone, they had no reason to try and convince me to stay.
In general, I think Ooma did a very good job of providing regular updates during the process. The overall process was as smooth as could be expected, with the worst part being that it still took 3 weeks total.
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That’s a lot faster than other places I had heard. I have been waiting for a decent deal on Ooma and I am switching.
What speed of internet connection do you have? Have you noticed any variation in quality on a call?
I’m really thinking about this service when I get married in the near future. I figure we would start off on the right foot.
This looks really appealing, but we get internet over DSL. Does this throw a monkey wrench into things?
After reading your previous article about Ooma, I ordered one from Costco for my father-in-law and it has been great. Phone was running withing minutes. It came with 6months Premiere Trial amd $100 long distance credit. Ported the landline on 1/5 and received an email from them that it should be doen by 1/20. Nice! My father-in-law was paying $85/month with ATT. Just saved a ton of cash!
Ooma has the best call quality of any VoIP provider I’ve used. I’ve been without a landline for so long, I’ve found myself waiting to go home so I can call people using Ooma since it is so much clearer than my cell phone.
Been using Ooma for about 6 months now – excellent quality and clarity, maybe 2 dropped calls in that time. Lowered our cell phone minutes and already paid for itself in savings. Didn’t have a landline before this, so I was assigned a number, but use my Google Voice number instead. I have cable for internet, and do not utilize the phone lines at all, instead using multiple handsets with a cordless phone.
I’m curious about what Ken asked. Are you doing this over cable or DSL (or something else)?
I am on cable modem. DSL can be tricky, but many providers are offering what is called “naked” or “dry-loop” DSL which does not require an accompanying landline.
Alternatively, you should ask your landline provider what the *rock bottom* plan is. Previously, I had downgraded to a line where even local phone calls cost 40 cents per minute, but the monthly charges were only like $8/mo in my area. DSL + $8/mo could be cheaper than cable in your area, and then you can add on Ooma for your actual calling.
My ooma phone system is working great. Until now, I have been call forwarding my landline to Ooma to make sure the system works. Now it is time to port my number to Ooma – this article was helpful in getting over my fear of porting my home phone number.
I ordered Ooma for my small business and it has been a little bit of a hassle but I was not prepared for all this. Since it is a business and I cannot afford to have the phone system down for anytime, I had to do some rewiring and get ooma completely ready to go when my numbers do port over. I have a temporary number and I have been using that to make outside calls for about a month now. I LOVE THIS SYSTEM! Even though things are not moving as quickly as I would like, the money I will be saving every year is in the thousands. I recomend this product to anyone who is interested in saving money! To answer the questions about the DSL, I use DSL and it doesn’t impact the phone system in the least. My Dad bought oona too and loves it. His number just ported and he is happy as can be with it.
My Ooma has turned out well, we completed our number port last weekend. Our paperwork for the porting somehow got lost, so porting took longer than expected, but it’s been working well otherwise.
That’s alot better than the porting experience I am having. I sent in a request and received no response. When I followed up with support I was told I needed to Fax in a signed LOA which I did. Again after no word for 3 weeks I sent an email to customer and support and received the same response that I had to fax in a signed LOA. So now it looks like I bought a device to save some money and 2 months later will be waiting another month before I can drop my existing phone provider.
I would look elsewhere if I wasn’t sitting here with a $250 piece of hardware.
I am thinking of using ooma, but I am concerned about our gate cnection. We are in a geted community and the phone is used to grant access. Ooma would not gaurantee it would work. If anyone has this issue and has input I would love to hear
ooma advertizes free phone. Why do they,have a limit on the number of min’s and charge extra fees that you already pay on your internet bill? I called ooma and they couldn’t explain the charges and/or limit on minutes.
Great Stuff, I was with Sun Rocket for a year and half (I had pre-paid for 2 years – so I came out a little short), then transfered to Teleblend ($17 a month incl taxes). I picked up a refurb Ooma hub this weekend from Fry’s and started the number port today. Looking forward to no more bills.
Do I have to keep my land line in order to transfer my old number to OOMA or can I cancel my land lineand still be able to transfer the number?
@sunny – You have to keep the landline account open until the transfer is completed.
Well… I’m at least 6 weeks into the process. My port request during activation was not processed. The poor phone support lady can’t seem to read my account detail well enough to tell me actual status of my port request. She says to reference my.ooma.com. Which, for me, no longer shows my port request status. It did once, but not any longer. E-mail support seems to be a lot better, but takes longer.
Anyone else have those issues?
Well I was unpleasantly surprised today when I activated my ooma to find out that it would take 3-4 weeks to port my existing number. New FCC rules that went into effect in 2010 require VIOP companies to port number within 1 business day. Why does ooma get away with such a long wait time??!?
I am switching from TWC to ATT DSL + Oooma + DirectTV and now I have pay for an additional month service of TWC while paying for my new services!
I have installed ooma at my home. Works very well. I now wish to port my existing number with AT&T / Bellsouth. This line is also my DSL. Cable is not an option where I live.
Do I have to cancel my DSL and renew my service after number porting?
Well I wish I could say my porting experience with Ooma was a smooth as some of the other post. Purchased Ooma equipment directly from them after being told by two representatives that may home phone number of over 8 years and tied to a business was eligible to port. This information was also verified on their website. Long story short after unbundling services with my existing phone company and incurring service fees to make my number available to port, Guess what Ooma tells me the number can not be ported. Lesson learned Buyer beware!
Cindy, did Ooma say why they couldn’t port your number over?
I had to cancel because of the porting issue. I setup everything correctly with my current provider. I recieved an e-mail with an updated porting date. So I called customer service. They stated that everytyhing was on track. One week later I got another e-mail with a new later date. I called again – they again said eveything is on track. I called the day that the prot was supposed to complete orginally and stated I would like to cancel. They made no attempt to apologize or remedy the suituation. Their porting takes a long time. This was not apparent to me in any of the numerous online reviews. I just want people to be aware of that. The customer service person blamed it on the company that does their porting for them.
The call quality sounded great. The hook up to the cell phone was perfect. I really wanted this to work, but starting a relationship with a company that way is not what I am interested in.