Vonage

[parnelli]

Is it my imagination or did Vonage originally offer virtual numbers for free? Looks like theres a $10 activation and $5 / mo for that service... has it always been such??

I can't speak to always, but it's been that way for at least a couple years.

[Jeffrey Schronce]

I also tried to get the 2 year for the price of 1 deal best I could do was 15 months for the 1 year price. Seems the 2 for deal comes out around holidays but is only for the first 1000 customers that sign up. (I wonder if anyone ever really got that deal?)

Ya, that was the response I got. I thought they may jump on the 2 for 1 deal if they knew they could take an account away from Vonage, but nope, 15 months for $199. Still amazingly cheaper than Vonage, especially when you consider the second virtual number.

[ScottGolden]

I wanted to add one more thing, since this thread has gotten more general.

There are tons of companies out there selling VOIP. I hada bad experiance with a company called MyPeople. There reps are really nic but I needed the service for FAX. One of my endevors is a menu faxing company. (shamless plug www.menufaxing.com) They had all sorts of problems with realiable service. One dropped packet kills a FAX.

They shot me around thier tech support department. Got me to the 'top technical person' who might have had a clue but never dealt with FAX. Finaly, I cancelled in the '30 day trial period'. They kept most of my money for some fee or other. They also took 3 months to send me a 3 dollar check.

I would recomend stering clear of them

[gerti]

Sunrocket "Free Extra Year" deal on now!

For those of you on the fence:

Sunrocket's "Free Extra Year" deal came back today, not sure how long it'll last.

[Jeffrey Schronce]

For those of you on the fence:

Sunrocket's "Free Extra Year" deal came back today, not sure how long it'll last.

You have GOT to be kidding me! I just signed up the other day!
On the phone right now.

[Jeffrey Schronce]

I wanted to add one more thing, since this thread has gotten more general.

There are tons of companies out there selling VOIP. I hada bad experiance with a company called MyPeople. There reps are really nic but I needed the service for FAX. One of my endevors is a menu faxing company. (shamless plug www.menufaxing.com) They had all sorts of problems with realiable service. One dropped packet kills a FAX.

They shot me around thier tech support department. Got me to the 'top technical person' who might have had a clue but never dealt with FAX. Finaly, I cancelled in the '30 day trial period'. They kept most of my money for some fee or other. They also took 3 months to send me a 3 dollar check.

I would recomend stering clear of them

Sunrocket does have the decency to advise that they could have potential problems with fax, depending upon which fax you have. There are apparently a few different standards in transmission. I will let you know how they work out.

[Russianwolf]

I sent two faxes today through sunrocket. the first one dropped once. the second went through fine the first time. I was working on the net at the time, so that mnay have helped "burden" the system too.

[Jeffrey Schronce]

I sent two faxes today through sunrocket. the first one dropped once. the second went through fine the first time. I was working on the net at the time, so that mnay have helped "burden" the system too.

In the short time I have had Vonage I have sent and received 10-15 HUGE faxes (50+pages) with no problem at all. I have a ton of bandwidth and I have my modem going straight into the Vonage device and the network is connected to the Vonage device. In this set up the Vonage device has first priority in bandwidth. I hope Sunrocket will not be a problem.

Jeff (who is still on hold trying to get the 24 month deal)

[gerti]

I wanted to add one more thing, since this thread has gotten more general.

There are tons of companies out there selling VOIP. I hada bad experiance with a company called MyPeople. There reps are really nic but I needed the service for FAX. One of my endevors is a menu faxing company. (shamless plug www.menufaxing.com) They had all sorts of problems with realiable service. One dropped packet kills a FAX.

Fax over VOIP is always going to be dicy. Basically you have a digital signal converted to analog tones (fax) being sampled and reconverted to digital at a relatively low sampling rate (VOIP). It may work for older type fax protocol (up to 14,400 bps), but it will definitely not work for high speed fax (V.34 at 33kbps). On some 'high speed' fax machines you can disable 'high speed', that should help.

I developed all software and maintained operations for a fax over IP (FoIP) company, but sadly they closed today. Otherwise I could have hooked you up... Oh well, it's been 10 good years. Anyone need a specialist?

[ScottGolden]

Gerti,

Sorry about the company closing. I had that happen to me in September and just had to take a consulting position since my startup has been taking it's sweet time.

The company I have started has a goal of increasing sales for small resturants. We send out up to 300 faxes a day for 250 bucks a month. I am using some 6 port Rocket modem right now and have a land line and vonage.

With Vonage I have not problems at all. I have sent over 10,000 faxes over thier line and not a single problem. Same for the land line. I do get some trouble when the load on my internet connection is high but thats to be expected.

I might be interested in pick your brains about FOIP since the details I have found are somewhat sketchy. I am in make money fast and sales mode now but once I build up a larger number of customers, I would probably be willing to hire you for some short term consulting.

My eventual goal is to find (or write) a product that will act as a vitrual modem. It seems to be that it should be possible to write (or buy) something that would allow me to skip convert to analog and then convert back to digital. In the best of all worlds the device would look like series of Hayes compatable FAX modems to Windows 2003.

BTW what was the costs structure for the FOIP company. How much did they charge per minute and was it per minute or per fax?

Sorry about getting a little off the topic.

[Russianwolf]

In the short time I have had Vonage I have sent and received 10-15 HUGE faxes (50+pages) with no problem at all. I have a ton of bandwidth and I have my modem going straight into the Vonage device and the network is connected to the Vonage device. In this set up the Vonage device has first priority in bandwidth. I hope Sunrocket will not be a problem.

Jeff (who is still on hold trying to get the 24 month deal)

I have the modem going into the router and then into the sunrocket router, so that could be one of the reasons for my issue. I fax something about once a month, so for me it's no big deal, but this makes me think that voice quality may be improved as well (not that I have noticed bad wuality there) by switching the router order.

[Jeffrey Schronce]

Sunrocket Kept My Business

Quote :
"Dear Jeffrey Schronce,
Thank you for choosing SunRocket VOIP service!
Concerning your request to get the second year of service free, we would like to acknowledge that you already signed up for our Annual plan with a promo of free three months on July 28,2006. Please be informed that we would be voiding the free three months promo on your account and apply the second year free. Please let us know if this is fine with you so that we can sent your request to our Billing department to have the promo change processed. Please keep this ticket number as reference: "

Nice job Sunrocket. BTW it is back to 3 months free on the website. I guess they use that at the end of the month/quarter to pump up sales.

[Jeffrey Schronce]

Fax over VOIP is always going to be dicy. Basically you have a digital signal converted to analog tones (fax) being sampled and reconverted to digital at a relatively low sampling rate (VOIP). It may work for older type fax protocol (up to 14,400 bps), but it will definitely not work for high speed fax (V.34 at 33kbps). On some 'high speed' fax machines you can disable 'high speed', that should help.

I developed all software and maintained operations for a fax over IP (FoIP) company, but sadly they closed today. Otherwise I could have hooked you up... Oh well, it's been 10 good years. Anyone need a specialist?

Ya, definately sorry to hear about the company closing.
Here is some more info on faxing over VoIP :

What to look for in a fax machine
The vast majority of current consumer grade fax machines and the increasingly popular all-in-one printer/fax/scanner machines available via national retailers provide a consistent level of service. Look for Fax Transmission Speeds described in terms like "G3 compatible", "sends 1 page per 6 seconds" or "modem speed at 9,600 bps or 14,400 bps" (sometimes shown as 14.4k bps). If your fax machine package indicates this level of performance, you should be in good shape to fax via SunRocket. Remember, your fax reliability may vary depending on the speed of your broadband connection.

Avoid Super G3 speed
There is another fax speed out there called Super G3. Most consumer grade faxes don't offer Super G3 speed. Fax machines supporting Super G3 are most typically found in a corporate business environment. While sometimes a fax in Super G3 mode will go through using SunRocket service, longer faxes are more likely to have some sort of transmission problem, and we cannot guarantee reliable operation of Super G3 fax transmissions.

[Jeffrey Schronce]

I have the modem going into the router and then into the sunrocket router, so that could be one of the reasons for my issue. I fax something about once a month, so for me it's no big deal, but this makes me think that voice quality may be improved as well (not that I have noticed bad wuality there) by switching the router order.

I was not a big fan of the idea of putting the Voice Module in front of the wireless network router. However, it has turned out ok and I have noticed no noticeable drop in speed on our network. Speed test ran a few minutes ago results in 4347 kps down and 347 kps up (cable) while using the phone to call RI.

[gerti]

Gerti,

Sorry about the company closing. I had that happen to me in September and just had to take a consulting position since my startup has been taking it's sweet time.

Thanks!

I might be interested in pick your brains about FOIP since the details I have found are somewhat sketchy. I am in make money fast and sales mode now but once I build up a larger number of customers, I would probably be willing to hire you for some short term consulting.

My eventual goal is to find (or write) a product that will act as a vitrual modem. It seems to be that it should be possible to write (or buy) something that would allow me to skip convert to analog and then convert back to digital. In the best of all worlds the device would look like series of Hayes compatable FAX modems to Windows 2003.

BTW what was the costs structure for the FOIP company. How much did they charge per minute and was it per minute or per fax?

Sorry about getting a little off the topic.

I was on the technical end of things and don't know much about pricing. We mostly operated in Asia and Africa (actually there is still a stand-alone network with 600 or so circuits using our hard- and software), with the pricing more dependent on the local markets.

FoIP is more of a moving target, with most companies making up their own definition. But in almost all cases it is a store and forward sort of deal.

I think ideally for your case would be a 'PC to Fax' type of service. Some of them basically work like a printer driver, with the result going to the fax company which then transfers it to one of their fax servers. Most offer Broadcasting capabilities as well. One example would be www.faxsav.com, though I don't know much about them so don't take that as an endorsement.

All our systems were Linux based, and we had anything from small systems with 2 modems to systems with 60 analog modems or systems with multiple ISDN PRI circuits (30 lines per circuit).

The key was finding a place to co-locate with a carrier who could offer reasonable pricing.