With a push for a more connected home in current tech trends, one California-based company is reinventing the landline phone for convenience and safety.
Ooma, Inc., a smart communications platform for small businesses and home consumers, took into account everything they believed was wrong with the home phone service when creating the smart landline, Ooma Telo.
The Ooma Telo product was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show back in January 2009. It offered free U.S. utilizing the Internet, with consumers paying only applicable taxes and fees after purchasing the product. Owners could easily check their messages from any phone or web browser, with the ability to have home calls rerouted to users’ mobile phones.
A premier program with the Ooma Telo offers expanded call blocking and the addition of a second line.
With the success of Ooma Telo, CEO Eric Stang says it only made sense to expand the product into a comprehensive home system.
“As we see the connected home evolving, we see many different types of solutions becoming available for use in the home. We’ve seen a number of those already: smart doorbells, smart cameras, security solutions like the sensors we’ve introduced. We feel all that needs to be tied together around the home phone experience,” Stang explains.
Stangs say Ooma’s unique cloud platform is ideally suited to enable new innovative services, which include the Home Monitoring Service, just introduced at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show.
The new comprehensive do-it-yourself home monitoring solution is designed to alert users of events within their homes. It includes motion, water, door and window sensors in addition to the unique ability to remotely place a local 911 call from the home. This eliminates the issue of being unable to be immediately routed to the call center closest to your home, a common problem when calling 911 from mobile phones.
Stang explains that one-percent of Ooma users call 911 each month.
“You might not think you use 911 that much, but when you need it, you need it,” Stang adds.
In addition to remotely dialing 911 and receiving alerts when someone calls 911 from your home, consumers can also manage their system and sensors via the Ooma Home Monitoring Mobile App on their iOS or Android mobile device. Users are able to receive real-time notifications from the system, which supports up to 100 connected sensors at a time.
Stang notes that unlike a traditional security company, Ooma Home Monitoring System is very much about creating a personal home security system at a lower cost.
“You can start with whatever you like, try it out, add sensors as you wish. It’s a very simple easy process. Just push a button to pair the sensors and stick them up where you want them,” Stang explains.
He adds a lot of customers, who may even have some other security solutions, have the Ooma just for an extra added peace of mind, especially in locations that don’t normally have coverage with typical companies.
All Ooma customers receive the home monitoring system free for the first sensor. For each additional sensor, Ooma Basic service customers can subscribe to Ooma Home Monitoring for $5.99 per month, while Premier service customers can use the service at no additional cost.
More information about Ooma and the release of the new Home Monitoring system can be found here.
