Gadgetwise Blog: Phone Sounds Good, but How Is the Deal?

The Ooma Telo and the HD2 handset.

The Ooma Telo is advertised as a “free home phone service,” and while it’s nowhere near free, it has excellent sound quality and may still be a better deal than your current phone service.

Ooma provides an Internet phone service, like Vonage and Skype. It also includes the hardware you need, like magicJack, Ooma plugs directly into your router and can make calls without a computer. It uses Voice over Internet Protocol – VoIP for short – to make your calls.

Oooma is billed as a free service because there is no subscription fee after the initial purchase of the hardware. But there are recurring costs.

Ready to break out the spreadsheet? This is where it gets tricky to determine just how good of a deal Ooma really is.

The up-front hardware cost is not inconsiderable: The Telo, which is sort of the home base for the Ooma systems, lists for $150, but that doesn’t include a handset. The Ooma HD2 wireless handset lists for $60.

Then you still have to pay local phone fees and taxes. Those vary depending on where you live. Where I am, it’s $8.89 a month, according to the calculator on the Ooma Web site.

If you want to make international calls, there’s another set of fees, varying by country.

The Telo comes with the full suite of features you’d expect from a VoIP service, including caller ID, call waiting, voice mail and online voice mail access.

But there is also a $10-per-month premium suite of services, which adds features like a second line, call forwarding and voice mail alert. For yet another $5 a month, you can also add voice-to-text messages.

Don’t forget another cost: You have to have Internet service to use VoIP. If you are using Ooma to replace your phone in a bundled service akin to a phone, cable and Internet package, your costs could go up for two out of three of those services. Make sure that difference in cost is included in your spreadsheet.

You’ll have to add all of these costs and fees and compare them to what you pay now to determine how long it will take for the Telo to pay for itself. It must work out well for some, given the seemingly high percentage of satisfied customers on Amazon.

Total price aside, it’s a terrific sounding product. Calls are very clear, nearly as good as my wired line. Whether it’s a bargain or not is between you and your calculator.

Bits Blog: Silicon Valley Sounds Off on Failed Cybersecurity Legislation

A cybersecurity bill that would have set security standards for the computer networks that govern the nation’s critical infrastructure was blocked by a Republican filibuster in the Senate on Thursday.

John McCain, the Republican Senator from Arizona, and other Republicans opposed the bill on the grounds that the standards would have been too onerous for corporations. In the weeks leading up to the Senate vote, a compromise was struck to make those standards optional. But on Thursday, following the filibuster, the Senate voted 52 to 46 to end debate on the bill, which fell eight votes short of the 60 it would have needed to pass.

In Silicon Valley, “regulation” is often treated like a four-letter word. But the Valley seems to have made an exception for cybersecurity, where a sort of Wild Wild West has taken hold. Criminals, “hacktivists” and government agents are able to have their way with few effective security technologies and regulations to stop them.

We contacted three Silicon Valley security experts to get their take on the bill, the cyber threat and the potential, as some have warned, for a 9/11-style cyberattack. They are Rob Rachwald,  director of security strategy at Imperva, a network security firm; Roger Thornton, the chief technology officer of AlienVault, a threat detection service; and Mark Seward, a senior security director at Splunk, a data security firm.

What was your take on the bill? Should it have passed?

Mark Seward: The bill went through a metamorphosis over time. At one point it had real teeth for industry. Then, there was compromise to remove that. The fact is, it’s needed.

Rob Rachwald: It wasn’t going to make any difference. The bill lost its teeth when it dropped the security mandate clause. The problem is that it was all sticks and no carrots. It included security mandates but it did not say, ‘We’re going to invest more in law enforcement, or create a central exchange where you can see where threats are coming from.’ It just said, ‘We’re going to impose a bunch of stuff on you.’ And then, ‘Actually, we’re going to make that voluntary.’ It lost its teeth. It became an empty suit.

What was the opportunity lost?

Mr. Seward: This is a huge setback. Frankly, every day we don’t pass legislation is a huge setback. It’s  the difference between whether we want to be a third world country or a first world country. I’ve traveled abroad and experienced power outages firsthand. The resilience of our infrastructure’s ability to resist an attack is the mark of a first world country. Not being able to trust that water is going to come out of the tap, or that when I light my stove natural gas is going to come out, is a real problem in a first world country. A cyberattack could literally mean that the things we most take for granted won’t be available.

Mr. Rachwald: After the standards became voluntary, it was a wash. The real opportunity loss was the fact that, at least initially, they wanted to build a centralized exchange between the public and private sectors for threat information. They weren’t clear how they were going to do it, but the fact they wanted to do it was important. If nytimes.com gets hacked by someone with ‘IP address 123’ it might look like an isolated incident. But if law enforcement could see that there was an attack from that IP address against multiple news sites, it would indicate that something much bigger was happening. That was the real opportunity missed here.

Roger Thornton: The fact is, intellectual property is being stolen from the industrial base at outrageous rates. Companies are getting broken into all the time. But the idea that there’s some kind of regulation — some sweeping mission to Mars — that is going to solve the whole thing overnight, well, that’s just not going to happen.

This regulation wouldn’t dramatically change the business of cybersecurity in my opinion. It would only build awareness — which is good. Maybe if it had passed 10 years ago, we might have avoided these problems. But now, it’s a different story.

Last week, Shawn Henry, the F.B.I.’s former top cybercop, warned of a 9/11-style cyberattack and said the public won’t take the threat seriously until they experience it firsthand. Is that fear-mongering? When do you think we will witness such an attack?

Mr. Seward: It’s my understanding that the Department of Homeland Security’s incident response team discovered that oil rigs are already under attack. But the fact that I can sit here and imagine scenarios where a key component, like water, might not be available to nuclear reactors is disconcerting. There are plenty of scenarios where the point at which two different parts of critical infrastructure intersect — like oil and gas pipelines, nuclear plants and water treatment facilities — could be jeopardized. All those things are interconnected. Our ability to have the society we have depends on the interconnection of those systems. An attack could happen tomorrow. It could happen next year. Or it could happen 10 years from now. There’s no predicting.

Mr. Rachwald: It’s always quote-unquote imminent. The point is, this legislation would have forced people to think about the threat much more seriously than they will otherwise.

Bits Blog: Silicon Valley Sounds Off on Failed Cybersecurity Legislation

A cybersecurity bill that would have set security standards for the computer networks that govern the nation’s critical infrastructure was blocked by a Republican filibuster in the Senate on Thursday.

John McCain, the Republican Senator from Arizona, and other Republicans opposed the bill on the grounds that the standards would have been too onerous for corporations. In the weeks leading up to the Senate vote, a compromise was struck to make those standards optional. But on Thursday, following the filibuster, the Senate voted 52 to 46 to end debate on the bill, which fell eight votes short of the 60 it would have needed to pass.

In Silicon Valley, “regulation” is often treated like a four-letter word. But the Valley seems to have made an exception for cybersecurity, where a sort of Wild Wild West has taken hold. Criminals, “hacktivists” and government agents are able to have their way with few effective security technologies and regulations to stop them.

We contacted three Silicon Valley security experts to get their take on the bill, the cyber threat and the potential, as some have warned, for a 9/11-style cyberattack. They are Rob Rachwald,  director of security strategy at Imperva, a network security firm; Roger Thornton, the chief technology officer of AlienVault, a threat detection service; and Mark Seward, a senior security director at Splunk, a data security firm.

What was your take on the bill? Should it have passed?

Mark Seward: The bill went through a metamorphosis over time. At one point it had real teeth for industry. Then, there was compromise to remove that. The fact is, it’s needed.

Rob Rachwald: It wasn’t going to make any difference. The bill lost its teeth when it dropped the security mandate clause. The problem is that it was all sticks and no carrots. It included security mandates but it did not say, ‘We’re going to invest more in law enforcement, or create a central exchange where you can see where threats are coming from.’ It just said, ‘We’re going to impose a bunch of stuff on you.’ And then, ‘Actually, we’re going to make that voluntary.’ It lost its teeth. It became an empty suit.

What was the opportunity lost?

Mr. Seward: This is a huge setback. Frankly, every day we don’t pass legislation is a huge setback. It’s  the difference between whether we want to be a third world country or a first world country. I’ve traveled abroad and experienced power outages firsthand. The resilience of our infrastructure’s ability to resist an attack is the mark of a first world country. Not being able to trust that water is going to come out of the tap, or that when I light my stove natural gas is going to come out, is a real problem in a first world country. A cyberattack could literally mean that the things we most take for granted won’t be available.

Mr. Rachwald: After the standards became voluntary, it was a wash. The real opportunity loss was the fact that, at least initially, they wanted to build a centralized exchange between the public and private sectors for threat information. They weren’t clear how they were going to do it, but the fact they wanted to do it was important. If nytimes.com gets hacked by someone with ‘IP address 123’ it might look like an isolated incident. But if law enforcement could see that there was an attack from that IP address against multiple news sites, it would indicate that something much bigger was happening. That was the real opportunity missed here.

Roger Thornton: The fact is, intellectual property is being stolen from the industrial base at outrageous rates. Companies are getting broken into all the time. But the idea that there’s some kind of regulation — some sweeping mission to Mars — that is going to solve the whole thing overnight, well, that’s just not going to happen.

This regulation wouldn’t dramatically change the business of cybersecurity in my opinion. It would only build awareness — which is good. Maybe if it had passed 10 years ago, we might have avoided these problems. But now, it’s a different story.

Last week, Shawn Henry, the F.B.I.’s former top cybercop, warned of a 9/11-style cyberattack and said the public won’t take the threat seriously until they experience it firsthand. Is that fear-mongering? When do you think we will witness such an attack?

Mr. Seward: It’s my understanding that the Department of Homeland Security’s incident response team discovered that oil rigs are already under attack. But the fact that I can sit here and imagine scenarios where a key component, like water, might not be available to nuclear reactors is disconcerting. There are plenty of scenarios where the point at which two different parts of critical infrastructure intersect — like oil and gas pipelines, nuclear plants and water treatment facilities — could be jeopardized. All those things are interconnected. Our ability to have the society we have depends on the interconnection of those systems. An attack could happen tomorrow. It could happen next year. Or it could happen 10 years from now. There’s no predicting.

Mr. Rachwald: It’s always quote-unquote imminent. The point is, this legislation would have forced people to think about the threat much more seriously than they will otherwise.