Jon Metzler

A new VoIP startup called Ooma has gotten a ton of press recently, even before their recent formal launch. (Google says 780,000 articles.) Their pitch - buy a box for $399, get free VoIP for life.

Maybe I’m just slow, but I don’t get this, or at least feel I’m missing something. Why buy a box? Why spend $400 for it? Most bafflingly, why are seemingly educated trades calling this “toll-free”? $400 upfront doesn’t feel toll-free to me. Amortize that over, say, two years and you’ve still paid close to $17/month. (Years ago, that would have seemed like a bargain. Welcome to the new Follow the Free reality. Thank you, Kevin Kelly.)

Softphone-based VoIP (Skype, Yahoo, GoogleTalk, etc) requires no box, no upfront fee, and is free to other in-network users. I use Skype for conference calls regularly.
So, what gives? Is the box a Trojan Horse for something else? Distributed content delivery over a private network? Who would want access to that box?

Please, help me see the light.

Adding a very laudatory review of the service on TechCrunch that does nothing to assuage my concerns. Is it just me or is Ashton Kutcher looking a mite chunky? Sorry - I just ranged into celebrity blog turf