The number of businesses relying on fax machines has diminished but in certain sectors the fax remains critical to their day-to-day operations, and when these fax-dependent organisations decide to modernise their comms systems and adopt SIP the legacy fax-factor can cause confusion and create technical challenges.
In a move to address these issues and enhance the service SIP carrier tIPicall has linked up with eFax. "Fax is one of the areas we are asked about all the time," said Steve Harrington, Sales Director, tIPicall (pictured).
He noted that T38 is the protocol for fax on SIP but many of the major carriers in the UK and globally do not support T38, and if they do they do not guarantee it.
G711 is also possible and often easier to use but still has no guarantees.
"One of the main problems is international delivery," added Harrington. "End carriers abroad may not take the transmission and complete the call, rendering any critical fax requirement by an end user as unworkable."
Another factor is the PBX environment on-site, pointed out Harrington. "Some systems handle fax better than others and some restrict the protocols they use and how it should be set-up."
Customers such as law firms depend on their inbound and outbound fax and tIPicall's link-up with eFax enables customers to at least maintain their current requirements and in many cases improve them significantly, claimed Harrington.
"Providing inbound and outbound fax services digitally has been available for a long time, but there is new demand for eFax services which integrate with the new SIP environment," he said.
"Electronic fax and SIP work well together as we can keep the end user's current numbers and provide and enhanced service.
"While the decline of fax is well documented, it is still mission critical for a number of organisations and as such we need to be able to offer the full range of landline services for every customer."