Doug, We spent a long time trying to find an ATA that worked reliably for outbound faxing, but the reality is that it's just too flakey. It doesn't work in the moment that customers need it, and they get ticked off.
So we started telling customers they can spend $60+/month on an analog line from Bell, or they can change their process and spend $10/month on a fax-by-email service. Initially we got a lot of pushback - customers feel it's crazy to pay that much per month just to send 10 pages. So we told them to go talk to their vendors who require communication by fax. At the beginning of the conversation, customers tell us that vendors require faxing, and there's no other option. After speaking with their vendors, most customers are finding that they can actually email the vendors, or submit data through online forms. The customers simply hadn't asked the vendors about how they could contact them in so long that they just assumed fax was the only real option. Today we had a customer who did this, and found only one vendor out of ten that required faxing. They shopped around, found a competitor who didn't need faxing, and told the original vendor they needed to accept forms via email, or they were losing business. Suprise... An hour later the vendor had a way for my customer to email the vendor everything they needed. Fax is a dying technology, but it's been very hard to get rid of. The past few months have started to seem like the tide is finally turning. At this point we are always encouraging customers to reach out to any vendor who requires faxing and ask for alternative communication methods. The results have been excellent. Cheers, Alexander On Tue Nov 04 2014 at 5:45:30 PM Douglas Pickett <[email protected]> wrote: > I'd be especially interested in the consensus on how best to deal with > fax machines in a SIP environment today. > > Once upon a time I'd have leaned towards keeping the fax systems on > analog lines all for themselves (maybe also using them as the backup > lines). Or else use a fax-to-email for the incoming. Outgoing was > always a question mark - how to do the hardcopy original outbound in a > way that is as low fuss as a physical fax machine. > > Regards, > Doug. > > > On 04/11/2014 3:43 PM, Dean Yorke wrote: > > ok, let me clarify a little. > > > > I wil be creating a system to support 20 phones onsite with 2 fax > machines. There will be a couple of analogue lines for backup but > basically we will be trying to switch over to pure sip. > > > > Currently they have 5 analogue lines with 2 additional dedicated to fax. > > > > So, I am looking to see what people have to say about handsets. What > are the likes and dislikes out there. > > > > Hearing a big plug for the yealink and grandstream units. Is polycom > still viable? who has handsets available to try/rent? > > > > Thanks > > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] > For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] > >
