At the recently concluded and highly successful event known as ITEXPO (News - Alert) Austin 2012, all of the biggest and brightest industry players in all areas of technology made sure they were present to network, learn from colleagues and showcase their innovative products and solutions. Commetrex (News - Alert), a company deeply rooted in the fax space, was one such business that made its way to Austin, TX., and even walked away with the coveted award of Best Service Provider Solution for its Smart FoIP offering.
Stefanie Mosca, managing editor of TMC (News - Alert), had the chance to speak with Mike Coffee, CEO of Commetrex about what it means for the fax provider to be an exhibitor at this not-to-miss conference. Coffee stated, “You can say that we have been on a crusade for the last few years to make FoIP (fax over IP) work in carrier networks. While FoIP with T.38 has been reliable in the enterprise for some time, as soon as ATA and fax servers start to take advantage of SIP trunking, problems with fax completion rates in carrier networks started to arise and we were troubled by that.”
As a major developer of fax technology, it was there and then that the company realized that anything that can improve the utilization of FoIP is good for not just this organization in particular, but the industry as well. After countless tests, “we solved the problem and applied for a patent on it because it is a big deal.”
This invention ultimately became the company’s Smart FoIP solution, the second version of its Smart ATA product released by NetGen Communications. Smart ATA is the industry's first analog telephone adapter to include T.38 version three with V.34. Also, it is the only ATA that offers reliable FoIP when making calls to carrier networks.
In a statement, David Greenwald, the product’s team leader explained, “Since carrier-based FoIP calls begin as a voice call, the two endpoint fax terminals can ‘hear’ each other early in the call as soon as the connection is established. At that time, they begin executing the T.30 fax protocol. But if the carrier is late in attempting to switch to T.38, it will unwittingly kill the fax if the calling gateway does not have Smart FoIP. And multi-page failures in G.711 FoIP are all too common. Smart FoIP eliminates them by making all multi-page faxes appear to be multiple single-page faxes. Problem solved!”
This carries the functionality needed to overcome two major obstacles; the fact that when T.38 re-invites arrive at the calling origination point, they were once too late to be accepted without killing the call, and PCM clock-sync problems that cause most commonly-faced failures.
Edited by Allison Boccamazzo