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Ooma Telo and Telo Air wireless adapter hands-on
Remember the Ooma Telo? It suffered the same fate as most home VoIP adapters: a lifetime chained to the home or office router, bound forever by a freedom-crushing Ethernet cable. But no. No more. The benevolent engineers at Ooma have decided to set the Telo free. Hello, Ooma Telo Air Wireless Adapter -- you're about to put VoIP in our kitchen. Ooma's Voice over IP service and the Telo adapter itself are hardly new, but we couldn't resist giving the outfit's new VOIP liberating dongle a try. Read on for more. %Gallery-133124%
Ooma intros Telo Air wireless adapter, liberates Bluetooth solution to the masses
Heads up, Ooma fans: the equipment that you know and love for free local and long distance calls is now more flexible than ever, thanks to the Telo Air wireless adapter, which adds WiFi capabilities to the Ooma Telo. While the system previously relied on an Ethernet connection for quality calls, the adaptive redundancy of this $50 add-on is said to overcome any performance degradation that you might otherwise experience. Additionally, the Bluetooth adapter -- once available only to Premiere subscribers -- is now available for $30 to anyone who wishes to integrate their mobile phone or wireless headset with Ooma. Of course, you'll need to remain within 30 feet of the Telo (due to Bluetooth's technical limitation), but if you're undeterred by the short leash, it could be a fine alternative to the company's handset. The Bluetooth adapter is available today, and the Telo Air is expected to ship on October 1st. If you're looking to ditch the local telco and save some coin, you'll find the full PR after the break.
Ooma Telo HD, Handset, and iPhone app hands-on
We stopped by Ooma's booth at CES for a quick hands-on with the new HD Telo and some time with the iPhone app. Voice quality on the service was pretty decent, although we did notice a pretty significant bit of lag -- we're assuming things would work better on a quality connection, as opposed to the slammed pipes here on the show floor. The new DECT handset was also quite nice, although it took a second to figure out how to initiate a call. We also played with the iPhone app for a second -- it worked as advertised, although once again we were limited by both the poor network connections on the show floor. It's certainly an interesting concept, though -- we'll have to wait to see how this all works in the home. %Gallery-82934%
Clean out those ears: Ooma's Telo goes high-definition, gets iPhone app
The home entertainment world may have moved on from high-definition everything to 3D everything, but the telco industry is a little bit less bleeding edge, just entering the HD revolution now courtesy of Ooma. The Ooma Telo is getting upgraded and will soon be packing some tidy new features including so-called "Pure Voice" and "High Definition Voice" enhancements, promising to deliver "crystal clear conversations over congested networks" and a "richer, more natural sounding conversation." Also on tap is direct support for calling through Google Voice, Bluetooth support so calls to your celly can be piped through your Telo, and "human-aided" voicemail transcription that we can only assume means some low-wage worker gets to listen to every reminder from your husband or wife to pick up some milk on the way home. Now there's a career opportunity for nosy folks. Full PR after the break. Update: Updated the image to reflect the new Telo.
Ooma Telo hits the streets, handset add-on follows next month
We're not sure how we really feel about Ooma Telo's slick new look (pictured on the right). Sure, it might seem more at home with the rest of our generic home electronics compared to the semi-retro original (left) ... but is that necessarily a good thing? Either way it's out now, and at $250 a pop it's quite a bit more friendly on the wallet than the original Ooma Hub, which retailed for $400 way back when. The big new feature of the Telo is its DECT 6.0 support for working with the upcoming Ooma Telo Handset which will be out next month for $50. Since this is Ooma, all local and long distance calls are free right out of the gate, but a Ooma Premier membership goes for $10 a month and gets you some improved functionality. Two months are included with a purchase of the Telo, and a year subscription gets you a free number porting or a free Telo Handset when it becomes available. Read - Ooma Telo press release Read - Ooma Telo in the wild
