On Thu, 29 Feb 2024, Russell Senior wrote:
I went through this with my mother over the last year. At the beginning of 2024, we moved her voice service to Ooma. You need to buy an Ooma Telo. You can find Telo's on ebay for about $50. Ooma also charges just south of $50 to port your number to their service, but thereafter it's a little under $20/month. Another gotcha was when we ported the number, Ziply had to assign a new account number (because it is tied to the phone number). When they converted my mom's account, they just deleted (or made unavailable to us) her old account information, including billing history. We shipped the router back to them with their shipping label, but they continued to bill for it another month after they'd received it. Also the paperless billing and autopay we had set up with the old account went poof, so they happily billed for that as well for a month until we figured out what was happening and asked them to stop. I *think* that has all settled out now, and her bill will be $45/month for just 100/100 internet service. Because there is no regulatory body that cares, they (and their "competitors") are free to gouge, and we mere customers are without practical recourse.
Russell, Thanks for the detailed history. It might well be that having a business account with them, rather than a personal account, making a change could be more expensive with more of a hassle. I'm far less experienced than you in telco matters as the phone is a tool for my business so I know much less about the subject.
One regression associated with VOIP is you no longer have central office battery to keep your service working in a power outage. When your internet goes out, your voice service stops as well, unless you take your own steps to power your own equipment (and even then, their intermediate equipment might die for lack of power). You might be lucky and your cell phone still works, but ... you can't count on it. Be prepared to communicate with smoke signals during power outages.
Yep. We've had a couple of electrical outages the past few months and I used my cell phone to contact PGE. Both times the company sent me a text message that power was back on several hours after it actually was restored. :-) I guess I should stick with the monthly rental because I have other uses for my time than hassling with Ziply. Another example of the power of monopoly to affect consumers. Regards, Rich
