T38Fax Blog

If you're reading this blog, then you rely on FoIP in some way, and it's likely causing you headaches. Maybe you're a single ATA user trying to fax with your current carrier, but not having much luck. Perhaps you have a fax server that won't work consistently now that you've upgraded your phone network to VoIP. Or you're a service provider that can't seem to provide reliable FoIP to your customers and fax support is causing you nightmares.

If you fit into any of these categories, then your business depends on FoIP, but you can't get it to work reliably. As you upgrade your communications infrastructure to SIP, fax support can get left behind. Finding a carrier that guarantees (and supports!!) T.38 on your service is almost impossible. If you’re a carrier or service provider, you know that successful T.38 requires significant investment in equipment and expertise and fax troubleshooting takes skill from seasoned fax experts.

Luckily, we can help! T38Fax provides reliable faxing and premium support over our SIP trunks, which were specifically designed for T.38. Whether you’re a single fax user, a business with a fax server or IP-PBX, or a hosted VoIP or SIP trunk vendor, our Power-T.38 service can work for you. Find your use-case scenario below and see how.

Obihai Technology is a leading manufacturer in the Voice over IP industry and maker of the best-selling OBi universal voice adapters and IP phones. Their analog telephone adapters (ATAs) and gateways can bridge mobile, fixed line, and Internet telephone services. They also support T.38, an essential feature to ensure reliable faxing over SIP trunks.

The OBi202, OBi302, OBi504vs, and OBi508vs are each equipped with multiple ports and are capable of connecting to more than one DID. If you are using one of these devices, you can take advantage of multi-DID routing, which can save you money and decrease the complexity of your configuration. You can consolidate a group of DIDs under a single SIP registration. This will give you the flexibility

We are pleased to announce that we have successfully completed interoperability testing with Asterisk. Asterisk is a free and open source framework for building communications applications, like business phone systems, call distributors, VoIP gateways, and conference bridges. As open source software, it has been enhanced and tested by a global community of thousands. It is sponsored by Digium, and it is used by almost the entire Fortune 1000 list of customers.

Some of our largest service providers have built their businesses on Asterisk and related open source telephony tools. But the challenge to offering dependable faxing has been finding a SIP trunk vendor who offers reliable T.38. Asterisk is known to work very well with our Power-T.38 products. Simply activate service with us, connect to our SIP trunk, and marvel at how well the faxing works.

Our interop ninjas have been hard at work interop testing Asterisk. Their software has passed our rigorous testing requirements and made it to our Approved List. We've gathered our screen shots and recommended best practices and assembled them into our Asterisk knowledge base article, which you can find here:

It really is just that easy. Simply use Power-T.38 as your underlying carrier for fax calls, and we'll take care of the T.38 for you. Just imagine getting rid of those headaches!

Ready to put this to the test?

T38Fax is pleased to announce the launch of its new customer self-care portal. The portal has been completely redesigned as part of our ongoing commitment to enhance our customers' experience and provide outstanding support. We wanted the portal to be more intuitive, sleek, and user-friendly, and we also needed a modern foundation upon which to begin adding new features such as DID ordering, LNP porting and self-service trunk creation. Look for these new features to begin appearing in the coming months!

The new portal launch follows the release of a preview that was sent to customers for feedback. We incorporated many customer suggestions and in the end we think you will agree that the new self-service website offers our customers a far superior online environment, with enhanced features and functionality.

The new self-care portal will offer our customers:

T38Fax is pleased to announce that we have successfully completed interop testing with the Cisco SPA112 2-Port Phone Adapter and the Cisco SPA122 ATA with Router. We're especially excited about this certification since many of the service providers we speak to on a daily basis have already standardized on this platform and have large preexisting deployments of these devices in the field. The device's T.38 support is excellent, but like all T.38 devices they're only as good as the service they're connected to. That's where we come in (see below for links to our knowledge base articles)! 

Cisco itself doesn't need much of an introduction, of course. These ATA’s are part of Cisco’s line of best-in-class small business voice gateways and ATAs, designed to support office or residential communication needs. The undrlying technology has a strong pedigree in the SIP industry, having started out in the early days as Sipura Technology, which was wisely acquired by Cisco and branded as Linksys, then eventually promoted to the official Cisco brand. They are compatible with all industry voice and data standards and common telephone features such as caller ID, call waiting, and voice mail. Fortunately, the Cisco adapters also have a very mature T.38 stack, an essential feature to ensure reliable faxing over SIP trunks.

Most VoIP service providers struggle to provide a stable, reliable solution for fax. Our Power-T.38 SIP trunks, combined with Cisco's ATAs are a powerful solution to this problem, and in our experience result in happy

If you've found this article there's a good chance you're a hosted VoIP or SIP trunk vendor whose customers are trying to send faxes, unsuccessfully, over your network. Perhaps your support team is demoralized by the constant barrage of cases being opened by customers who found out just a little too late that VoIP and fax don't play nicely together? Do you wish you could offer T.38 FoIP that actually worked, without the technical support burden? Do you have customers that are frustrated by your lack of fax support? Are you afraid those customers will take all of their business to a competitor who not only advertises support for T.38 but who can actually deliver the goods?

What if I said this could be you? And that after one of the easiest configuration changes you've ever experienced, you'd never have to worry about fax again. Sound too good to be true? It's not.

We are pleased to announce that we have successfully completed interoperability testing with Grandstream GXW4004 and GXW4008 gateways. Grandstream Networks, Inc. has offered SIP Unified Communications solutions since 2002. Their open standard SIP-based products offer broad interoperability throughout the industry and have been recognized for their quality, reliability, and innovation. The Grandstream GXW400x FXS series gateways enable businesses to create seamless office environments, integrate traditional phones and phone systems into a VoIP network, and efficiently manage communication costs. They are designed for interoperability with leading IP-PBXs, Softswitches, and most SIP-based environments.

Grandstream's 4 and 8-port GXW gateways are an affordable yet powerful choice for customers wanting to connect up to eight (8) analog fax machines to our Power-T.38 service. As with most SIP ATAs/gateways, they can connect to us directly but they can also talk to us through any SIP infrastructure that knows how to do T.38 pass-thru (Asterisk, FreePBX, OpenSIPS, Kamailio etc). The GXWs are capable of routing incoming faxes via the called number (in other words, the incoming DID), which is such a useful feature that we've broken it out into a separate knowledge base article. 

The Grandstream GXW400x FSX series gateways have been thoroughly tested by our interop ninjas and work seamlessly with our Power-T.38 Fax over IP service. We’ve gathered our screen shots and recommended best practices and assembled them into our Grandstream GXW400x FXS series Knowledge Base Articles, which you can find here:

Ready to put us to the test?

We are pleased to announce that we have successfully completed interoperability testing with FreePBX, a product of Sangoma Technologies. FreePBX is a web-based open source GUI (graphical user interface) that controls and manages Asterisk (PBX), an open source communication server. It was written by a community of developers and contributors who work to make phone system software functional and easy to use. With over 1 million production systems in over 200 countries, FreePBX is the most widely deployed open source PBX platform in use across the world. 

Fax is a chronic annoyance for FreePBX operators seeking to offer Unified Communications (UC) services to their customers, or for IT administrators looking to base their company's phone system on FreePBX. It’s a shame, too,

We are pleased to announce that we have successfully completed interoperability testing with NetSapiens. NetSapiens provides advanced VoIP solutions to the industry’s leading service providers. NetSapiens’ SnapSolution allows service providers to offer more value to their customers and increase ROI. Its solutions include hosted PBX/Web centrex, unified communications, SIP trunking, security and cost control, user portals, device provisioning, contact center solutions, geo-diversity and high availability, API, and more.

NetSapiens engineers have worked closely with T38Fax to jointly document a configuration that will permit service providers to offload their T.38 Fax over IP traffic to us. This will allow the service provider to claim T.38 support, and it will be completely transparent to their customers. To learn more, see our knowledge base article.

Both T38Fax and NetSapiens will be at ITEXPO in Ft. Lauderdale, February 8-10. If you're in the area, feel free to come and discuss our joint solution. We are even offering free Expo Plus Passes! For more information on NetSapiens and their VoIP solutions, visit their website.

Don't have a T38Fax account?

We are pleased to announce that we have successfully completed interoperability testing with Fax Voip T38 Fax & Voice software. Fax Voip is a Windows based software that provides a full-featured SIP/H.323 softphone for Voice over IP (VoIP) calling. It also provides full functionality for sending & receiving facsimile transmissions via T.38 & G.711. From the perspective of your fax or voice application, it acts as a Voice/Fax modem, installing Virtual COM Ports and Virtual Fax Voip 14.4k TAPI Voice-Fax modems on your system. You can configure your Fax & Voice program to operate with both the Fax Voip COM ports or virtual modems. From the perspective of your VoIP network, it provides a fully featured SIP/H.323 client with support for faxing over VoIP trunks, both in G.711 and T.38 (and more importantly, with Error Correction Mode - ECM!).

Fax Voip's software passed our rigorous testing requirements and made it to our Certified Device List. We’ve included a simple configuration guide on our website to help you get up and running.