We still don’t know how Ooma manages its P2P network and whether it can survive a company breakdown. If it’s pure P2P, then the device can continue to run without the company. Because the peers are responsible for data transfer and there is no centra…

Let’s suppose you are the first user in your community. Everything is peachy keen until another Ooma user out of the area decides to call your local movie theatre, Wal*Mart or someplace. The call is terminated over your personal landline. You coincidentally want to call your next door neighbor. That call has to terminate through the same landline that is now servicing other callers. Your call will be blocked. How convenient for you.

So, it’s going to take a tremendous number of users signing on to the service and making local lines available to give you free ubiquitous calling nationwide. Otherwise, your call will have to be routed via broadband and terminated through a paid service. That will be at an added expense — probably a couple of cents a minute — just like other peer-to-peer networking architectures. What happened to the free for life model?

Let’s look at a different scenario. Ooma works with the telephone connected to the Ooma hub. Presumably you can connect it through your NID (network interface device) to work with all phones in the house. If not, when junior is off at school only one person at a time can join the conversation unless you have a speakerphone. Using the Scout, you can get second dial tone, but per the previous example you can’t join the existing conversation unless a three-way call is established. Again, how convenient.

And, for the time being, all beta users must have a local line to subscribe to the service. That’s to benefit Ooma so that they can establish a network. Again, you’re paying for a local line so free is a misnomer.

What happens beyond the beta window? If users don’t need to have a local line, then how do you call them? Ooma isn’t a Competitive Local Exchange Carrier so they can’t get local numbers for users unless they buy them elsewhere. There’s a cost associated with that. Did someone say free?

Some of these peer-to-peer schemes make sense. I’ve been a PhoneGnome user for two years. You buy your equipment once — at a more reasonable price — and get most of the same features because they tell you up front you need a landline and a wholesale VoIP network provider if you want to make off-network calls. No hidden fees; no scam.

I could go on and detail other concerns I have, but I’m not a user and basing my opinions on public statements. If someone wants to send me a White Rabbit invite, I’d be happy to thoroughly test the device/service and report back again.