(Mostly) Free Landline Phone Service by Ooma

Rainier Apolonio Published on September 20, 2024

Difficulty: Easy

Costs:

Service is Free (Plus Fees Required by Law).
One time hardware purchase starting at $79.99.
Optional: Phone Number One Time Transfer Fee at $39.99.

Featured Services: Ooma

Are you one of the few people who still love a traditional landline? Well what if I told you that you could keep your landline mostly for free? As a former subscriber when cell phones were becoming the new mainstream, my personal experience with Ooma was amazing. The service works as advertised and you save tons of money.

The way the system works is that it will use your internet connection to establish the traditional phone line service with Ooma. It's important that your internet service is just as consistent as electricity and water being available in your house. Additionally, if you decide to put Ooma in front of your router, Ooma automatically ensures that under heavy internet usage, your phone quality won't suffer.

There are some upfront costs you will need to cover in order for this free service to work. You pay for the equipment (one time purchase) and the federal taxes plus fees that are imposed on a monthly basis. The monthly fees are pretty nominal and are required by law.

Fees include:

Regulatory Compliance Fee
911 Service Fee
Federal Universal Service Charge (U.S. customers only)
State or province and local taxes, fees and surcharges

You can find out what fees you would be paying by using their Fees Calculator. In the Los Angeles area, my fees calculated to be around $7.50 (as of September 2024).

Next is to purchase of Ooma's hardware. The Ooma Telo looks like an answering machine that takes advantage of your current internet connection and provides a traditional telephone line for a handset of your choosing. The Ooma Telo is available from their website and at retailers such as Best Buy starting at $79.99. The Ooma Telo usually needs to be connected to your modem via an ethernet cable, but they do sell units that work over Wi-Fi and LTE (with a monthly service charge).

Ooma allows you to transfer your existing landline number for a one time fee of $39.99. During the migration process, you would keep your traditional telephone phone line active until the migration is completed. Migration times do vary but typically take a day or two for the process to be completed.

Pro Tip: If you consider yourself to be pretty technology saavy, I found a "hack" that increases your value with your Ooma equipment. When we decided to disconnect from the traditional landline service, the utility company came over to the house and disconnected the line that connects the house to the phone service node on the street side. So when we picked up the house phone, the line was completely quiet with no traditional signal tone. However, if you connect your Ooma Tele phone line directly into the wall, "voila!" you have a signal tone that is being broadcasted from the Telo phone system. The best part, you can use your original phone handset set up wherever it was previously connected.

With Ooma's free phone service, you get the traditional amenties that you probably have with your traditional landline service. This includes free nationwide calling, call waiting, call return, and caller ID. They do offer a "Premier" service for an additional $9.99 a month and gives you a ton of features, namely calls to US, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, blocking unwanted/spam calls, call forwarding (if you're internet goes down), and some nice integrations with services like Google Voice.

Like most people, I ended up canceling our phone service in favor of using smart phones as my main form of receiving calls. We also moved and decided to cancel service (even though you technically can just bring the whole Ooma unit with you and hook it in to your new home). But, for those who really need a landline but don't want to pay the exorbitant fees, this is a great option.