Re: VOIP - What Works? What Doesn't?

[Chris <chriswheeldon@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Friday, March 23, 2012 6:13:43 PM UTC-7, Bob La Londe wrote:
> I've been playing with voice over IP telephone service for the last couple
> days.  I've had a plain old Magic Jack plugged into a USB port on my desk
> computer for a while now (2 years maybe).  I use it as a spare line, and for
> the tackle and mold making sideline business.  It works pretty decent.
> Sometimes its a little tinny sounding, but as long as my Internet works it
> seems to work.  Since I upgraded my internet service a while back it has
> worked much better.
>
> Well, I decided to check out 8x8.  They are a service claiming to provide
> professional grade VOIP services.  I know of businesses much larger than
> mine who are using them.  So far I am not impressed.  They setup my account
> wrong, and they couldn't fix it.  They had to send me another piece of VOIP
> equipment to get it to work the way they set it up.  Its so I can send faxes
> using an ordinary analog fax machine over their VOIP service.  It doesn't
> work.  (I haven't had an actual fax machine hooked up in years for my
> business, but I need to test everything.)
>
> They claimed to make some adjustments to their compression codecs, and it
> supposedly tested in both directions, but I never received a test fax.  When
> I tested further just to make sure hardware was good I plugged both the fax
> machine and the fax modem into a plain old telephone service (POTS) line.
> Both pieces of equipment worked fine on POTS.  Then on a lark I decided to
> plug the fax modem into the Magic Jack.  I don't figure there was a
> snowball's chance in heck of that working, but amazingly it did.  Then back
> to the VOIP port from 8x8.  No joy.  Call goes through, I can hear the fax
> tones, but it fails every time.
>
> Sadly I must conclude that 8x8 is not quite were they need to be just yet
> for me to recommend them to my customers.  If they want a cheap phone line
> for occasional use I think a Magic Jack would be a better choice.
>
> I've got three 8x8 VOIP adaptors sitting in my communications room right
> now.  All different models.

Bob,

On a bit of a side note, how has it been without a fax machine for so long?  Are you using something else like eFax instead, or just simply email and snail mail?

I figure at least 99% of the faxes I get are junk mail, and I don't remember the last time I needed to fax something out (other than to start up accounts, but those are emailed now).

And yet, it seems like it's some sort of necessity to have a fax machine to run a business.

- Chris