Vonage is sued in a class-action lawsuit with claims that the company "made false and misleading statements and concealed material information in the marketing, advertising, and sale of Vonage Fax Service by purportedly failing to inform consumers that the protocol Defendant used for the Vonage Fax Service was unreliable, and, according to Plaintiffs, was unsuitable for facsimile communications." You can read the entire notice posted here.
As any expert in the VoIP area will tell you, fax truly is a challenge. There are a number of problems that range from packet-loss to interworking issues to signal corruption due to voice compression. That said, there are way to make fax work, given the right configuration and a properly engineered network.
Perhaps it is the latter point that is truly a problem for Vonage: Vonage does not manage the Internet and, as such, has absolutely no way to guarantee that fax calls will work. Did they advertise the service with any kind if guarantees?
Whatever the case, the general public should be made aware of the fact that, not only do fax calls not work reliably over IP networks, but neiher do point-of-sale terminals, security alarm systems, modems, or any other device that emits an analog signal. It is not because VoIP is bad, but simply because those legacy technologies were not designed for the Internet. What is needed are new technologies that replace the older technologies.
For many old technologies, there are replacements. In fact, there is a standard for Internet fax transmission. Companies that make security systems should define new systems that transmit signals over the Internet, and restaurants and stores should utilize the Internet to transmit transaction data.
The Internet is clearly here to stay and is the communication platform of the future. While this lawsuit may have simply been related to fax issues, it certainly highlights the need to rethink the notion that we should continue to try to bring along legacy technologies onto the Internet. Sometimes, it makes more sense to move away from the legacy technologies.
6 comment(s)
by Pissed March 24, 2010 03:56 UTC
I just spent 5 hours dealing with the Vonage misfits that 'finally' admitted that faxing more than 4 pages will be "pitiful at best." Where do i sign up for the lawsuit?
by Paul E. Jones March 24, 2010 18:33 UTC
Faxing is really a problem for VoIP systems, but it has nothing to do with Vonage, per se. You might be interested to read this: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-jones-sip-forum-fax-problem-statement-00.
It really does not matter which VoIP provider you use, especially if it's an "over-the-top" provider like Vonage. If you contact me (http://www.packetizer.com/people/paulej/), I'd be happy to explain the technical issues in simple terms.
by Questions March 31, 2010 01:59 UTC
@Paul E. Jones - : Saw the IETF SIP problem paper you edited, in draft form. Is that "official" yet?
@Daily Payload - is there any followup word on this lawsuit?
by Wrong subject March 31, 2010 02:55 UTC
This article's subject should read "Vonage Settles Fax Issues Lawsuit". The lawsuit was sued way back in 2006. The case was SETTLED(signed off by the judge) January 2009.
by Paul E. Jones March 31, 2010 15:04 UTC
As the other person commented, this issue was settled in court -- or at least there was a proposed settlement, according to the link in the document. I'm not personally sure where it went from there, but I guess "Wrong subject" is telling us it was settled. Either way, the title isn't wrong: Vonage was sued. More importantly, fax is very problematic over the public Internet.
As for the Fax problem statement, the SIP Forum continues to work on this. That document will not go forward as it is, but the intent is to publish a document that provides more specific guidelines for SIP device implementers.
That said, it will not likely fix fax over the Internet. The problem is that the Internet is a "best effort" transport. There are so many things that can go wrong. I would bet I can make T.38 work fine inside the United States, but it's really a problem trying to interconnect with a wide variety of carriers around the world. As an expert in this area, I can't blame Vonage for the issues they're facing: many are simply out of their hands.
I've often joked -- though I'm fairly serious -- that "Fax over IP" ought to be PDF via SMTP :-) Emailing PDF documents is significantly faster and the image quality is significantly better. And, a lot of print/scan/copy devices these days have the ability to scan documents and email them as PDF attachments. I love that capability.
by anonymous July 8, 2010 20:46 UTC
I agree with PDF over IP. I am using a electronic fax company for all my FAX need. They simply assign you a phone number and all incoming FAX are converted to PDF and eMailed to me. Out going FAX are simply scanned as PDF and email to the same company and they will send it as FAX. This is for stuff or people that cannot send/received PDF and email. I'd avoid using FAX if I could use email.
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