Faxes & VOIP?

Does anyone have a cheaper phone line to send & receive faxes?

The phone company wants $90 + fees a month for a land line and my VOIP service says they don't really support faxes.

We get way too many faxes to make a fax service affordable.

Eh? Back in the day, before the internet got to be what it is today, I would play multiplayer computer games via modem. Since I didn't want to tie up the phone line for three hours at a time, I put in another line. No extras, just a "message unit" line (each call would cost like 10 cents, plus long distance fees). IIRC, the basic charge for the line was like 10 bucks a month, which with taxes and fees, would come out to 20 bucks a month. I still pay just about 35 a month for my current landline, and that's loaded up with caller ID and all manner of other junk.

1988RedT2 wrote: Eh? Back in the day, before the internet got to be what it is today, I would play multiplayer computer games via modem. Since I didn't want to tie up the phone line for three hours at a time, I put in another line. No extras, just a "message unit" line (each call would cost like 10 cents, plus long distance fees). IIRC, the basic charge for the line was like 10 bucks a month, which with taxes and fees, would come out to 20 bucks a month. I still pay just about 35 a month for my current landline, and that's loaded up with caller ID and all manner of other junk.

I'd spend $35 a month in a heartbeat, but $90+ IS the cut rate line now.

Faxing over VoIP is tricky and if your provider doesn't offer a wide range of codecs, or uses an "appliance" box like Vonage it may be impossible.

http://www.voipmechanic.com/faxingissuesandotherdevices.htm

It's pretty old-fashioned anyways, you can email attachments now...

If you don't do it often you could consider an online fax service, where you upload a document to a web form and fax it to a number.

call the phone company and negotiate. They are pretty concerned about losing customers. I have 2 lines and internet from my phone provider for $75 per month with unlimited calling. ( land line) I called and said that I needed to cancel my service, and all of a sudden the cost was cut in half.

It is crazy that there is not a way to move on to modern, basically free technology such as scan/attach. I am guessing it has to do with signature requirements for legal docs? J

No it has more to do with that's what people know and use. We scan and attach or efax, but we get a lot of faxes from people who don't know how to use their printer/fax/scanner that's sitting right beside the computer.

i'm amazed that people still fax stuff.. email has been around for long enough that it should have replaced the fax machine- especially since you can send faxes to fax machines over the internet these days.. well, you could back in '98 when i first got online, so i'd think it's still done now, right?

It's the getting the piece of paper into the computer and onto an email that confuses some people. I still get people who can send emails but can't even add an attachment.

I am entering a business that is very dependent on faxes. It is linked to Federal dollars, so accurate documentation is mandatory.

The broker forwards orders via Fax. These orders must be given to drivers, then ink signed by customers. E signature is not acceptable. We then Fax the completed order to the broker for payment approval. Then we must keep paper orders on file with original signatures.

Sure I could scan/voip, etc. But it would require multiple re-scans, mobile printing, etc. There is no way it could be done without someone designated to sitting at a desk with a computer.

As is, one Fax paper follows the order all the way through. Some things just work better this way.

I don't write the rules.

I worked in the office equipment industry for 15-years, and I was often thrust into situations where one of our customer had switched to a VOIP system and now I'm expected to make their fax work, despite the fact they never bothered to research whether it was capable of doing so.

Rant over, here are the facts:

1.) No office equipment manufactures support VOIP. Period.

2.) Most manufacturers have a list of tips/tricks/settings to attemp to allow VOIP and POTS to place nice when faxing. These settings involve changing T1/T2 Timer lengths, baud rate, attenuation, etc. These settings, if they exist, are usually buried in service menus. And it's much easier to make the problem worse if you're not sure what you're doing.

3.) One of my last encounters with the issue was dealing with a local company who received their business phone and Internet service from a company across the country, their phones were straight VOIP only, and as expected, faxing was intermittent at best. After talking to their provider, they had a Cisco VOIP -> Fax box, which in addition to changing T1/T2 timers, etc., also had some configuration for the IP side. And once configured correctly, it seemed to be pretty consistent.

4.) BTW, faxing will always fail sometimes, regardless of whether either party uses VOIP.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

Well Pete thanks for bursting my bubble!!

So do you have ANY suggestions other than the stupidly expensive landline?

But as expensive as the landline is when I do the math it's still cheaper than a fax service.

I wish I remembered the exact details of the Cisco box I dealt with last time, but it was specifically for Fax/VOIP, but that's really the only option if you need consistent fax I over VOIP.

My office got a little SIP ATA box from the telco (not Cisco though) for use on our fax line.

Once you follow the instructions I linked earlier it should work but it can be a bit of a crapshoot.

carguy123 wrote: It's the getting the piece of paper into the computer and onto an email that confuses some people. I still get people who can send emails but can't even add an attachment.

that would be me .... there are plenty of us out here ... I have yet to figure out how to get pics from iPhoto to load anywhere ( other than e-mail )

sometimes I'm able to get attachments to do what they're supposed to do , sometimes not .....

sometimes I can get photobucket/flicker/whatever to actually work, most of the time no.. .. when it does work I usually have no idea what sequence of mumbo-jumbo I used ...

VOIP phone lines pretty much kill burglar alarm signals, too.

cwh wrote: VOIP phone lines pretty much kill burglar alarm signals, too.

What does that mean?

It means that a normal burglar alarm panel works with POTS but not VOIP. No alarm signal to central monitoring station.

cwh wrote: It means that a normal burglar alarm panel works with POTS but not VOIP. No alarm signal to central monitoring station.

That's not true. Mine worked before I disconnected the alarm and I have 2 neighbors and our neighborhood alarm that work with VOIP.

My bad, I guess. Been a few years since I got that info, improvements must have been made.

I'm holding on to my rotary dial phone. In a couple years, people will come to their senses and ditch this VOIP and email mumbo jumbo and go back to POTS and FAXes because it works.

Come on now, VoIP could make phone calls as free as email right now. It's silly that we're still using POTS and faxes.

GameboyRMH wrote: Come on now, VoIP could make phone calls as free as email *right now.* It's silly that we're still using POTS and faxes.

Yeah, but the phone companies couldn't charge us as much. I can't believe the people who fall for the "get internet, tv and phone" packages. They end up paying way too much for the phone portion compared to what they could get it for from a VOIP provider.

carguy123 wrote:

GameboyRMH wrote: They end up paying way too much for the phone portion compared to what they could get it for from a VOIP provider.

Well, yeah, but then they couldn't send and receive FAXes.

We have a 1-800 Vonage number at our house. When we got that it came with a FAX service and the few times we have needed it it has worked.