Don't Fax Without VoIP: Why and How

To put it plainly, sending and receiving faxes would be made much simpler and easier with the wider acceptance of VoIP. Doing this, however, remains a technical difficulty for many, as some of its associated problems have yet to be sorted out. This doesn’t knock it out of the ring as a strong contender, but rather suggests that it requires more close attention.

“The main difficulty is that faxes are a different kind of data than voice,” says this recent Why-Switch-To-VoIP article. “Whereas voice data has to be delivered in real time in order to maintain a comfortable conversation, fax data can be delayed somewhat in order to guarantee that it is completely intact. It doesn't matter if some voice data is lost en route, but if this happens to fax data it creates an error in the fax transmission.”

Some VoIP service providers work to resolve this issue by slowing down the speed of the data transmission or by using a specific codec. Even then, users only report partial success, and while some efforts and methods work, not all of them work all of the time, the article explains.

The first thing you need to do if you want to send VoIP faxes is to make sure that your VoIP service provider can do so for you by supporting this function. If so, they will most likely provide you with instructions on how to modify or change the settings of your current VoIP devices, the article adds. Furthermore, simply setting the codec to 711u has worked tremendously for some users, who claim that this is the only change needed in order to successfully send and receive faxes. This definitely goes on a case-by-case basis, where your VoIP service provider may even suggest other fax settings to you.

“All these settings may be hit or miss – if you get the fax function to work, great! If not, and dependable fax service is important to you, you can either keep a dedicated PSTN line or use one of the many efax services which are available,” which allows you to send faxes via e-mail. Also check to see if your VoIP service provider includes this as a part of their package, while some do and some don’t.

When looking for reliable fax service, consider FaxSIPit Services (News - Alert) Inc., a major player in the industry who has targeted the fax VoIP market by identifying a significant opportunity for delivering fax utilizing HTTPS. After noticing a consistent lack of performance with modes including T.38 and G7.11, FaxSIPit made it its mission to provide reliable and secure document transmission for some of the most demanding corporate, industry and government users.

In other exciting news, FaxSIPit will be exhibiting at the highly anticipated ITEXPO WEST 2012. Taking place October 2-5 in Austin, Texas, ITEXPO (News - Alert) is self-described as “the only place you’ll get the broad picture, as well as in depth-details.” Enterprise, government and SMB end users, resellers, service providers, manufacturers, developers, media and analysts are united for a full week packed with business-building, research and developmental insights, as well as conference sessions, demo products and live services and tutorials on the floor. FaxSIPit can be visited at Booth #621.

To discover more on what FaxSIPit’s fax services, click here.

To check out more on how VoIP can make sending and receiving faxes simpler and easier, click here.

To find out more about FaxSIPit, visit the company at ITEXPO West 2012 to be held Oct. 2-5 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, TX, (EVENT is… insert one sentence description). Visit COMPANY in booth # 621. For more information on ITEXPO, click here.