IP PBX Featured Article

Ooma IP PBX Adds Value with Home Security

By Steve Anderson
Contributing Writer

Value is the key to getting just about anywhere in economics, marketing, or many other parts of business. Internet protocol private branch exchange (IP PBX (News - Alert)) titan Ooma recently showed as much clearly with plans to add home security monitoring to its free voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) phone service.

Those who own an Ooma Telo system will be able to augment that system with a variety of extra sensors, ranging from internal motion to door and window to even flood sensors to add a new range of services focused on home protection. Since it's built around a series of sensors, it becomes sufficiently modular for users to decide just what protections they want in place. 

The sensors run on a wireless protocol known as ULE, which is a refinement of the DECT (News - Alert) standard normally seen in cordless phones. Thus, one base station can support as many as 100 sensors, allowing houses of most any size—and some businesses—to be completely blanketed with sensors. The sensors can even be connected directly to the Ooma app, and when one of the sensors is triggered, users can press a button to be immediately connected to 911.

For Ooma Premium subscribers paying $10 a month for a variety of services, home monitoring comes at no additional cost. Those who don't have Ooma Premium will have to pay $6 a month just for the monitoring service, so it's clear that Ooma Premium will be a particularly good value here.  The door and window sensors will costs $25 each, and the motion sensors will run $35. The water sensors, meanwhile, will be $30.

There was little doubt that Ooma was already providing value, but with so many alternatives becoming available in the IP PBX space, Ooma needed to provide further innovation to ensure its  position lasted into the oncoming years. By adding a home monitoring service to its platform, it did indeed provide this augmentation, which should allow Ooma to remain a viable firm for quite some time to come. Though it's unclear what would happen to the monitoring functions in the event of a power outage or Internet loss, and there are some other holes here too like the lack of smoke or carbon monoxide detectors, Ooma is still offering an even better product at the same price, and that means value.

In the end, it's all about value. Ooma is augmenting its value and making itself a more attractive buy in the IP PBX space. That's good news for Ooma, and for its customers. Will other firms step up their own value to compete? That's a fair bet, and we'll see that outcome soon.