As Voice over IP (VoIP) replaces office telephone lines with SIP Trunks, there is still one function that requires the old analog phone lines: FAX. Many business use faxes due to its ubiquity, ease-of-use, and legal status. However, supporting analog fax lines and debugging fax issues on VoIP phone systems is a major headache for System Integrators (companies that install and support office PBX and handsets) and Internet Telephone Service Providers (ITSPs).
The problem is the standard "FAX" transmission.
Standard FAX
Traditional FAX machines worked on a Group 3 (G3) protocol that compresses the image for transmission. The recipient's Fax Machines would then uncompressed the transmission and then printed the image. This required a lot of signaling data between the two fax devices to ensure all packets were received and put back together in the right order.
Supporting traditional G3 fax was difficult for some Softswitch vendors, but not Flysip. Flysip Softswitch is a back-to-back user agent solution, meaning that the packets that come into Flysip, go out of Flysip - untouched and as such, standard G3 FAX is supported over Flysip Softswitch.
T.38 Fax over IP (FoIP)
In a typical VoIP installation, analog phone lines for fax are provided by an Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA). The ATA connects to the IP network; it detects when a fax call is starting and converts the analog tones of a normal fax call into the T.38 network packets that can move along the IP network. The ATA may also be built into a multifunction printer (MFP).
Some Fax devices (such as MFPs) and T38 compatible fax machines, transmit directly as T.38 and can receive and convert inbound calls to an image, and then print as normal. An image of a sample FoIP solutions is shown at the end of this article.
EFAX
Service providers (such as companies like J2) convert faxes to emails, allow people to send a document (such as a word document) as a fax. Most e-fax solutions traditionally sent converted the document to a regular fax format to send to regular fax machines. This requires having a Front-End-Process (FEP) to transmit the document as a fax or convert a fax transmission to a document.
Flysip does not provide an "eFax" solution - but does provide all the APIs needed for a partner to develop an eFax solution that integrates with Flysip. APIs can be used to synchronize billing data between the eFax system (and users) and the Flysip Softswitch. The Flysip solution can then be used to invoice the eFax customers, modify balances, perform top-ups etc.
