Expat Community > Ecuador

Marianswede
Joined 2014
Posts: 13

Free (almost) phone service between USA & Ecuador

9 years ago

My husband and I are considering a move to Cuenca, and we currently have our phone service with Ooma (VOIP service). I called Ooma a couple of years ago to ask an unrelated question. I ended up talking to a tech support supervisor who surprised me with his information (a good surprise) about what would happen should we move to Ecuador.

Ooma (www.ooma.com), for those who are unfamiliar, is a "buy your own box" VOIP service. Once you buy the box and hook it up to your modem and router as per instructions, you have no more phone call charges, only a small sum of taxes and fees on the estimate of what you might have spent on calls (assuming you have the basic service as we do). Our monthly charge for Ooma is $3.74. For that, we have excellent clarity phone service, voicemail, and the ability to log onto our account online and peruse our voicemail, call history, etc. We can also collect our voicemail messages on site with the Ooma box. The boxes are available for purchase at Best Buy and Costco (maybe other places too), and cost $150ish. Ooma also offers a premium service plan (with call waiting, multiple "lines", call blocking and various other goodies) for $10 per month.

Ooma does not offer service into Ecuador. However, when I spoke with the Ooma supervisor, he informed me that if we moved to Ecuador, our Ooma phone service would become limited to calling the U.S. (an existing U.S. account holder calling a U.S. phone number). We would not be able to call from the Ooma phone to any Ecuadorian number. I would just take my Ooma VOIP box with me and set it up in my new (Ecuador) location. From Ooma's standpoint, calls made on my Ooma phone are calls from a U.S. number to a U.S. number (no long distance charges).

This is a limitation that I could definitely live with. I realized just today that this is important information for those who are considering a move to Ecuador!! You can't sign up for a U.S. account if you already are in Ecuador, it has to be done while here.

Marianswede

P.S. My husband is now onboard with this "move to Ecuador" plan, so it might actually happen! Yea!!

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Free (almost) phone service between USA & Ecuador

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