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resolvedNewbie to PhonePower ( old Nextiva user here ) I have just signed up with PhonePower mainly due to cost and "FaxCatcher". I dumped my Efax service, way to expensive and PhonePower's FaxCatcher feature sounds like it will meet my need. I can fax out perfectly but when I had someone fax me.... no go! Is there a PDF on how to use FaxCatcher in addition to the few sentences on the pop up where you enable-disable the fax to email feature?
thanks in advance
We have a few articles on our Wiki that give additional insight into the matter
http://phonepower.com/wiki/Fax-Enabled_VoiceMail
http://phonepower.com/wiki/What_format_is_the_fax_in%3F
However, if you are having difficulties receiving faxes then we will need to take a more in depth look into your account.
We have sent you an email. Please respond to it with the requested information and we can get started.
Moved to Residential & Small Business support.
You can use this link to do some testing if need be http://www.gotfreefax.com/
Ruthrey99...
Out of curiosity, is the person faxing you a Phone Power customer? Like you, I am new to Phone Power and have experienced an issue like yours. When I setup the service, one of the first things I did was to ask my friend, who recommended Phone Power, to fax me. We continually had problems.
Later I was reading another forum and somebody in that forum said the faxing problems occur when a Phone Power customer faxes to another Phone Power customer's fax catcher. I also have a plain old fax machine, so I connected it to answer instead of the fax catcher. When we faxed direct, the faxing was very successful, even using the highest fax speed.
Another thing I tried was to send a fax to my own fax catcher from my own Phone Power line. That did not work either, but I assume that is because that falls into the same category of a Phone Power customer sending a fax to a Phone Power customer's fax catcher. Other than that, faxing works fine when it comes from a non-Phone Power customer to my fax catcher.
bv12345...even though PhonePower follows the T.38 standards for the past few months, faxing over VoIp seems to be hit or miss for most people. So many POF (points of failure) arousing from internet congestion and fax machines just not being designed to work over an IP network. If you must fax over the internet go with a service like [removed] the fees are minimal and will save both parties much frustration. With the invention of scan to email and secure email via encryption, why anybody uses fax machines is beyond me?
BTW you can get a [removed] number in Seattle to receive faxes for free. If you would like your own dedicated incoming fax #.
[Victor Tech: Advertising of 3rd parties removed in accordance with Forum Guidelines]
thepcguru: I agree with you. I use scan to email 99% of the time. But a lot of companies do not have email addresses to send documents. They use online forms, will not give out their personal email addresses, and all the method they allow for sending documents is fax.
I have also encountered now, on 3 occasions, attorneys will not accept scanned documents, even with I already have and use their direct email addresses. I was once told that a fax is a valid binding contact, a scanned document emailed is not. I do not know if that is true, but I was told that.
As far as T.38 faxing is concerned, I use it with 100% success. I do not even have to lower the fax speed or remove the error correction as some sites recommend for VOIP faxing.
The only problem I have ever had was when I setup Phone Power, I tried calling my own number and faxing myself. That did not work, so I asked a friend on Phone Power to fax me. He was unsuccessful as well. The only conclusion I could draw, and this is just a guess, is that a Phone Power to Phone Power call is handled differently and somehow bypasses the T.38.
My friend also tried something different. He took his office phone which is on Verizon, and forwarded that number to my Phone Power phone. Then from his Phone Power number he called the Verizon number which forwarded to my Phone Phone Power number. Using that call forward setup, the fax was successful going Phone Power to Phone Power via a Verizon forwarding number. It seems you have to enter the Phone Power network from the outside in order for T.38 to work.
I never fax anyone who has Phone Power, so it does not really matter to me. When ruthrey99 asked the question, it just brought back some thoughts I had from when I was setting up the Phone Power service.
An on network call will utilize T.38. The failure could be related to the endpoint and what baud rate it is attempting to negotiate or the ATA and if it is configured to prefer T.38 instead of inband audio. Do you know what baud rate the source and destination fax machine were using? Also what type of ATA do you have?
Will an on network call still utilize T.38 going ATA to the fax catcher? Or does T.38 just work on network going ATA to ATA?
Both ATAs were HT502.
Several of my friends also have Phone Power, and I am not aware of any of them, including them, having any problems. The only problem I ever encountered was going from a Phone Power ATA to the fax catcher.
When trying to fax from an ATA to the FEVM(Fax Enabled Voicemail) the FEVM will invoke the T.38. If you can site some of the recent call attempts I will be able to isolate what caused the failure.
Yankee Tech... thanks for your reply. I will make a few test calls over the next day or two. When ruthrey99 started this post a few days ago, and mentioned a problem with the fax catcher, I was just relaying my experience to ruthrey99 to see if our experiences were similar. Unfortunately ruthrey99 has not been back on here to respond. The problem I was experiencing with the fax catcher was never of enough concern to report. But to assist you, I can setup a few test calls and report the results to you.
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