The Feds etc. charge connection fees, which ooma passes on to us. The fact that the feds make us pay this 'universal connection' fee is outrageous, but it's not ooma's fault -- everybody who provides you phone services has to pay it.
AT&T wanted to charge me $3/month for long distance service even if I made NO LD calls (the case for a couple of years). We had to deliberately cancel LD service with them, and the price of ordinary landline service just kept increasing. When it hit $30+ we switched to ooma and never looked back.
AT&T used to be respectable people. Now they're just cheesy.