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Ooma Enables Talkatone Users to Block Unwanted Calls

August 29, 2016
By Paula Bernier, Executive Editor, TMC

Users of the Talkatone mobile app from Ooma Inc. now have the ability to block unwanted calls and texts, the company announced today.

“In the last two years alone, Ooma has blocked more than 36 million telemarketer, public opinion surveyors and other unwanted calls for our Ooma Telo customers,” said Ooma CEO Eric Stang. “We’re proud to extend call blocking to our Talkatone app to help consumers block unwanted calls, including calls that violate the National Do Not Call Registry.”


Ooma provides business and home communications solutions. TMC CEO Rich Tehrani (News - Alert) once commented that the Ooma phone system is so appealing that it’s something that Bang & Olufsen could have designed.

The company’s Talkatone mobile app enables free calling and texting over Wi-Fi and mobile data connections for users of Android (News - Alert) and iOS devices in the U.S. and Canada. Users of Talkatone get a free U.S. phone number, free SMS and MMS messaging, universal group picture messaging, free inbound calling and up to 60 minutes a month of free outbound calling.

The fact that Ooma has expanded the call blocking features of its solution is noteworthy given that robocalls are a growing problem.

It’s been more than a decade since Congress passed the Do Not Call Act, as YouMail CEO Alex Quilici noted in a recent piece for CUSTOMER magazine, and yet Americans received an estimated 683 million robocalls in October alone.

“The hundreds of thousands of consumer robocall complaints made to the Federal Communications Commission barely scratch the surface,” added Quilici. “We now know that many hundreds of millions of robocalls are placed every month. In fact, roughly one in six calls received today is a robocall. When tackling a problem this huge, it will require a combination of new technologies, policies, penalties and perhaps even changes in consumer behaviors to finally solve it.”




Edited by Alicia Young

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