Ooma has introduced Ooma Connect, a fixed wireless internet and business phone service that small and mid-sized businesses can use to replace or back up slow or costly DSL, satellite and cable connectivity.
According to the company, millions of business locations in the United States are bypassed by high-speed internet and instead must rely on DSL, cable or satellite connections that can be slow, unreliable and expensive. And an even larger number of businesses don’t have internet backup, leaving them vulnerable to significant financial loss during internet outages.
Ooma Connect is a “double play” solution that delivers both internet connectivity and Ooma Office phone service for as little as $50 a month. The solution consists of the Ooma Connect Base Station and the Ooma LTE 460 Adapter, which provides wireless internet through a nationwide LTE-Advanced network.
One company that has already benefited from Ooma Connect is Wireman Fence Products of Rancho Cordova, Calif.
Wireman slashed its monthly bill for internet and phone service from $600 a month to less than $200 a month by switching from DSL service to Ooma Connect. Internet data is running eight times faster, according to the customer, and employees are benefiting from advanced Ooma Office features that weren’t available from their previous provider.
“We’re getting work done more quickly now that we don’t have to wait for web pages and emails to download,” said Sergio Gonzalez, manager at Wireman Fence. “Our team is also more connected to our customers because we’re getting voice messages forwarded to our email and through the Ooma Office mobile app, which lets us take business calls on our cell phones when we’re out of the building.”
Beyond the benefit of escaping from slow internet, Ooma Connect can eliminate the wait of days or weeks for service from a local bandwidth provider when setting up a new business location. A franchise outlet, for example, or a pop-up store can quickly get phone service and internet access. Ooma Connect can be pre-configured by Ooma or an Ooma partner, so the base station and antenna only need to be plugged in at the business site – eliminating the cost and delay of professional installation.
Ooma Connect can also be combined with an existing broadband connection, standing ready to provide wireless backup for phone service and internet data during outages. Small businesses in the United States will suffer more than $40 billion in lost productivity due to internet outages in 2020, according to the U.S. SMB Internet Outage Report from Independence Research, and 93 percent of the smallest businesses don’t have backup.
Ooma is also introducing a patent-pending feature called Continuous Voice with Ooma Connect. When the Ooma Connect Base Station is connected to both wired broadband and LTE-Advanced through the adapter, all Ooma Office calls, both outbound and inbound, are transmitted simultaneously through both connections. If wired broadband goes down, all calls in progress continue through the LTE-Advanced network.
In addition, Ooma Connect is ready for the emerging era of 5G. The Ooma Connect Base Station is designed to support future 5G wireless adapters, while the Ooma LTE 460 Adapter includes technologies such as a powerful 2×8 MIMO antenna, that should allow increased data speeds when cellular networks are upgraded as part of the transition to 5G.
