[VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider?

[Nathan Anderson]

Just to update everyone on this who piped in, and to be fair to FlowRoute...

A member of FlowRoute support contacted me off-list and told me that they have made some changes to their routes and list of upstream carriers since I contacted them about this back in August (and received the very non-committal "it may work, it may not...no guarantees" response), and they have apparently changed their stance and now claim unilateral T.38 support on all calls being terminated by them as of a few weeks ago, including to some international destinations (haven't tested this, so can't speak to this; just echoing what I was told).  He said if I'm still having problems I should open a ticket again.

So I ran the same tests I did before, and got the same results as before (actually, worse: I was 1 for 7 in my tests this evening).  Opened a ticket with the details (packet capture showed their end rejecting my T.38 re-INVITE), was told they tracked the problem down for that particular destination, opened a ticket with the upstream provider in question, fixed it in the meantime by re-routing around it, and asked me to try again.  I did so, and it is working 100% of the time now.

And all of this happened this evening, well after normal working/office-hours.  Needless to say, I'm floored at the amazing level of responsiveness (and results) that I got from them on this today.

All this to say that I'm going to give FlowRoute another chance (they've certainly earned it), although I appreciate some of the suggestions and offers I got both on- and off-list, as well as some of the other educational discussion surrounding T.38 and Fax-over-IP in general that this sparked.

Thanks, all,

--
Nathan Anderson
First Step Internet, LLC
nathana at fsr.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Nathan Anderson 
Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 5:56 PM
To: 'voiceops at voiceops.org'
Subject: T.38 termination provider?

Hello,

New to the list.  I work for a regional broadband ISP who is looking to also become an ITSP.

We are looking for a good SIP termination provider with reasonable rates to all of North America that also happens to guarantee T.38 gateway support for 100% of calls.

Currently, we are using FlowRoute.  We are happy with the service, but the odds of us hitting a gateway (through one of their upstreams) that will accept our T.38 re-INVITE are about 50/50...not very good.

We tried Gafachi, but that was not a good experience.  Their rate table is all kinds of screwed-up.

The only other one I've been able to find in my searches is Alcazar Networks.  Anybody have any first-hand experience with them who can vouch for them as well as their T.38 support for the wholesale termination product?

Other recommendations are also welcome, as well.  Although we may someday go down the road of loading an LCR table into our SBC, at this point we are looking for a single solid termination provider that will handle 100% of our outbound call volume (a mix of voice and fax); we can fall-back to FlowRoute as a backup solution if the primary provider goes down.

Thanks a million,

-- 
Nathan Anderson
First Step Internet, LLC
nathana at fsr.com