[cisco-voip] Fax over Voip (was:Color Cisco Phones)

[Robert Singleton]

On Thu, 2007-02-15 at 20:27 -0500, Simon, Bill wrote:
> If you think about all the conversions a fax goes through on VoIP, it's 
> a wonder it EVER works.

> Paper -> digitized -> made into analog noises -> converted to bits for 
> VoIP -> sent over ethernet or to a voice gateway -> converted back to 
> analog -> digitally reconstructed -> printed onto paper.
> 
> Something just seems very wrong about that.

The process becomes incredibly daunting if you break down each of those
steps, but that way madness lay...

> A "cleaner" solution, truthfully, would be to buy a pots line for your 
> fax.

That's about $30,000 a year for the 50 or so affected machines, spread
out in about 35 cities, *after* saving that $30,000 by converting faxes
to VoIP

> Or transmit by scan/e-mail.  Hey, it's more secure anyway.

At least 90% of my users are very non-technical. They have incredible
knowledge of plumbing parts and supplies, but it's tough enough for them
to use a fax machine with speed dials to their locations. Many do not
even have a PC. The wholesale distribution software that we use (and
sell to competitors, I might add) is text based and many of those users
do everything they need to on a Wyse 60 terminal. Further, many of their
customers are very small businesses that probably wouldn't have a fax
machine at all if we didn't have enough market clout to make it worth
their while.

All that aside, my biggest fax problems are between big branch offices
and their largest customers and between my corporate credit department
and many of those same biggest customers, so just about everyone has a
nice fax machine, as opposed to some cheap junk. Ironically, the nice
machines tend to have G3 modems and that appears to be where the problem
is heading.

One possible solution seems to be the use of FXS ports on the routers,
as opposed to ATAs and I have the engineer working towards testing that
out.