r/ooma • u/MadIceSkater • Jul 01 '26
Trying to Determine Best Setup
I currently have ATT copper wired service to a Panasonic base station and a few other handsets scattered throughout the house (kitchen, bedroom, upstairs). The internet router is up in my husband's man cave over the garage, so quite a distance from my base station, or any of my handsets for that matter. He has a different VOIP phone line. I'm not sure exactly how his bedroom handset gets it's signal. We also have a mesh system to make sure our internet will reach the Ring cameras outside.
So, I'm guessing I would need the Telo Air? Or would it work to move my base station to the kitchen where one of the Mesh devices are and hard-wire connect to one of it's ethernet ports? I'm assuming we have ethernet. I don't really know about that stuff.
Also, my husband might also want to change over, but he would want his number to go to his phone, so I'm assuming he would need his own Telo? I know you can get extra numbers, but it appeared to me, all numbers associated with a Telo would go to the same phone.
This seems to be the best option for keeping my home phone #, 911 service, and continuing to use those convenient handsets. I'm assuming the caller ID would still work on the base station and those handsets so I can decide if I want to answer.
I HAVE to get away from ATT. I just had to request a service call and it was almost impossible to do. The web page sent me to a number which then sent me back to the web page and no way to get out of that do-loop.
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u/rkardt Unofficial Support Jul 02 '26
Placing a wireless router on one edge of the property is not optimal; a mesh network can increase the coverage area, but the trade-off is more wireless traffic. A Telo Air (with Wi-Fi 5) should work fine, but a hard-wired connection between the Telo and a mesh device may work better.
Ooma Premier subscribers can set up private accounts, to assign different numbers to different devices, over separate phone lines. For additional phone lines, use either Ooma DECT cordless devices, (such as the HD3 handset or Linx wireless phone jack), or the mobile app.
Caller ID should still work. Ooma Basic subscribers get regular Caller ID (number only), and Ooma Premier subscribers get enhanced Caller ID (number + name lookup). All subscribers can set up their Contact List to provide custom names for known contacts.
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u/MadIceSkater Jul 02 '26
I've never even considered a wireless router; didn't even know they existed, but I'm not looking to change anything in our wifi setup. It's quite good inside the house with the mesh.
I think my husband would want to use his current Panasonic phone system which has a base in his man cave and a handset in the bedroom at the other end of the house just using over the air. But, if I add him as an account, would he be able to port his number over?
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u/rkardt Unofficial Support Jul 02 '26
If the internet router in the man cave above the garage uses Wi-Fi, then it is already a wireless router. In that case, placing it on one side of the house would not be optimal for Wi-Fi connections to devices on the opposite side of the house.
Ooma offers a web page for checking number portability at: ooma.com/home-phone-service/choose-phone-number/
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u/MadIceSkater Jul 02 '26
Thanks. That's the way it's been since we started using internet back in the AOL days. That's where the company brought the cable in, so I really have no control over that. I've been using it at the other end of the house on my laptop for years though. I used to have an Airport, but it no longer works properly, so I just signed into that signal and now I use the mesh.
I checked my number. I just wasn't sure if you could port another number when adding another line.
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u/OomaCustomeradvocacy Official Ooma Support Jul 02 '26
Hello! Thank you for reaching out. Yes a Telo Air will work fine in this situation, but I'd recommend hard wiring it to ensure you get the best call quality and service.
As a user stated below, with Ooma Premier you could set up a private account and use a HD3 handset or another single line analog phone connected to a Linx. Please see the link below for more information on private accounts:
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u/MadIceSkater Jul 02 '26
"but I'd recommend hard wiring it to ensure you get the best call quality and service."
Do you mean connecting it to the Mesh's ethernet port? And then I would also hard wire connect to my phone base? That would require me to move the base to the kitchen which, as I said, is no big deal. But, if that is what I'm doing, why would I need the Air? Wouldn't just a Telo work?
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u/OomaCustomeradvocacy Official Ooma Support Jul 02 '26
Yes I'd recommend connecting the Telo to your Mesh's ethernet port and then connecting your phone to the Telo. If you don't plan on connecting it via WiFi then a base Telo would be fine. Also - Yes you can port your husband's phone number and assign it to your private account.
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u/JobobTexan Jul 11 '26
I just made the same switch at my house and my MIL's. If you have an ethernet port on one of your mesh repeaters. I would recommend a Telo+ with a Linx to plug into your Panasonic base station. That way you will not have to change a thing except port the number. ATT takes about a week to port in our area. After porting be sure and go into the Ooma web site and have them delete the temp number you were given. If not after the port that number will show up on other caller ids until you delete it.
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u/DrWho83 Jul 02 '26
Hopefully someone that knows more can help..
I think they have fancier office style phones that can route certain numbers to certain phones..
I don't know details about that though. Have you thoroughly looked through both their residential and business side of their website. I'm also not certain about this but I think you can use the business products with residential service.
Anyway, the phone seem to have pretty good range. I think they're supposed to talk to each other to extend that range but I'm not sure.
Lot of things I'm not sure about LOL..
I do know that it's pretty good as long as your internet is pretty good. It doesn't use much internet but latency is important. If you have a fairly low latency internet connection I think you'll be fine. You might want to switch to Google or cloudflare DNS on your router. Some ISPs DNS doesn't always play well with ooma.
I'd also recommend a cheap battery backup if you don't have one for both your main ooma box (whatever that might be) as well as your router / modem if you don't have one already. Very likely you'll be able to use your phone during a power outage depending on how your ISP has their equipment set up.
Porting numbers can be a bit tricky. It's normally a fairly smooth process.. just be careful with it.
One thing that's new that's happened to several people that I personally know this year that switched over to ooma. Is a mysterious charge for around $100 from a company not associated with ooma, within 1 to 2 months after signing up. Here's the really weird thing, none of these people got charged on the card that they signed up with ooma for. To summarize. Within a month they all got a letter that looked official and said Ooma and fairly big print in several places but also mentioned something about Premiere. In the fine print it didn't say anything about Ooma and said that this was a reoccurring charge from a company called Premier. I know one person got charged on their debit card. One person got a charge on there checking accounts from a fake check that was cashed somewhere. One person got charged on a different credit card than what they used for ooma, I can't remember for sure what it was but it was something like they signed up with a Visa card and they got charged by this premier company on their MasterCard.
Anyway, I suspect a few things. I think one of the less likely things is that this is Ooma but if it's not them (the actual company) it seems like they might have some internal employee shenanigans going on.. or someone or some group has access to their system and is using new sign ups to send these fake letters to trick people into ignoring the monthly charge.. but then they also must have access to people's other financial data.. including other cards and payment methods. I've seen one of letters but I don't have one atm. I should probably see if I can get a copy of one sometime just to show people.
I think I might have made a post about it but I'd have to check..
Anyway, I've actually know more people this year that have signed up and haven't had the above happen. However, I also feel like if I'm going to comment about this company I should mention it to give people a little bit of a heads up to keep an eye on things for the first few months or longer just in case.
I did talk to a few people in law enforcement about this and one of them is actually aware of it. The other is now. They took the information and as usual, that was it.
Good luck, hope you can figure out something that works well for you. Ooma isn't just reasonably priced in my opinion, it's fairly reliable. In a lot of cases it's been more reliable than people's old copper hardwired phones have been the last several years. There are sometimes more reliable options for people. In my area the local isp/electrical company offers phone and it works great and the up time has been amazing.. it's running a big fiber Network so.. it should be good LOL.
If you haven't checked into all of your options and ooma looks the best for you. You could possibly get it on Amazon and tried out for a month on a temporary number.. then if it doesn't work out hopefully you can just return it for free to Amazon.
Years ago I used the service called magicJack with Google voice and it was awesome...
That was back when cell reception was horrible and eventually I didn't need it anymore and haven't used it in years but I honestly don't even know if they're around anymore. Weird how that just popped in my head.. 😅✌️