Ooma expands free home service into Canada

PALO ALTO, CA - Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

Ooma, Inc., the leading provider of HD-quality free home phone service, today announced that it is expanding into the Canadian market. Beginning today, Canadians can now choose to receive free crystal-clear calls to any phone number within Canada with the one-time purchase of the Ooma Telo. For Premier subscribers in the U.S., Ooma has now expanded the free-calling area to Canada as well.

The innovative Ooma Telo device plugs into a high-speed Internet connection and existing home phone to provide free phone calls and bundled features including voicemail, caller ID, call waiting and 911 service. After the initial purchase, customers pay only applicable taxes and fees. Based on an average phone bill of $40/month, the Ooma Telo pays for itself in just six months and customers will save more than $200 in the first year, more than $600 in just two years and nearly $2,000 in five years.

“Since Ooma began offering free home phone service in the U.S. with the Ooma Telo, our subscriber base has grown quickly, doubling in the last year alone,” said Eric Stang, Chief Executive Officer at Ooma. “We’ve received frequent requests to bring Ooma to Canada because of the high cost of phone service there and we anticipate a healthy level of interest in eliminating expensive monthly phone bills. Free home phone service, outstanding voice quality and advanced features are an unbeatable combination.”

The Ooma Telo is able to deliver superior call quality because of its PureVoice™ HD technology, a bundle of five technologies, including:

Adaptive redundancy to avoid voice quality sounding stuttered or garbled due to packet loss. The Ooma Telo detects packet loss on the Internet connection and automatically sends redundant packets to boost the clarity of phone calls.
Advanced voice compression that reduces bandwidth consumption by 60 percent over standard VoIP technology and is more capable of withstanding packet loss without degradation.
Wire-speed QoS allows the Ooma Telo to prioritize voice packets without slowing down the rest of home network to help ensure crystal-clear calls.
Secure, encrypted calls using the same encryption technology that governments use to protect classified data. Using the Ooma Telo, phone conversations are even more secure than over a traditional landline.
Ooma HD Voice technology doubles the fidelity of phone calls by capturing twice the speech information of a standard voice call so conversations sound more lifelike (HD-compatible phone required).

Customers who select the optional Ooma Premier service for $9.99 a month can enjoy advanced features like call screening, three-way conferencing, call forwarding, blacklisting, 911 notifications, distinctive ringtones and a multi-ring option so home and cell phones ring at once.

Ooma customers have the option to choose a new home phone number for free or to port their existing phone number for a one-time fee of $39.99. Annual subscribers to the Ooma Premier service can choose to port an existing home phone number at no additional charge. Ooma also offers an affordable international calling plan to 61 countries for as little as a penny per minute. Calls made between Ooma devices anywhere in the world are always free.

Ooma customers can save even more money on their mobile calling plan by tapping into their Ooma account on the go and making phone calls over any Wi-Fi or 3G network with the Ooma Mobile HD app. The Ooma Mobile HD app is compatible with Android devices as well as the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. It costs $9.99 to download from app stores.

The Ooma Telo is now available at Amazon.ca and London Drug in Canada at an M.S.R.P. of $229.99 CAD. Ooma Telo includes a one-year limited warranty, a 30-day money back guarantee and a free 60-day trial of Ooma Premier service. Live customer service is available by phone in both English and French. See www.ooma.ca for more information.