Faxing with VoIP has been a mystery that few VoIP phone service experts have so far been successfully able to unbundle. VoIP fax has always been guilty of not providing the quality fax results that are needed by the business world. This one single thing has been turned against VoIP phone service by the landline phone service providers only because of the fact that no one has ever given VoIP fax problem a serious consideration. Here are few simple to follow tips which would help you improve the fax quality that you receive on your VoIP phone. Do share this post with people you know who really want to use their VoIP fax but are not able to put a lid on the uncontrollable VoIP fax quality issues.
Slowing the Baud Rate
One of the key problems that have added to the already compounded issue is the increasing transmission speed of the new fax machines. Unfortunately, lowering down the Baud Rate is something that most of the modern fax machine manufacturers really don’t feel necessary to include in the user’s manual. This further reinforces the notion that you just can’t use VoIP on fax. If you have the manual with the instructions to decrease the Baud Rate to 9600, then you don’t need to worry about that. Just lower the baud rate and you will see significant impact on the quality of faxes received as well as sent. However, if you don’t find any of the Baud Rate related configuration in the instructions then the best way is to contact the fax machine manufacturer on how to lower the Baud Rate. One of the primary reasons for having a poor fax quality on your VoIP phone service is the loss of data packets. Data packet loss is minimized by readjusting the Baud Rate. There may still be some data packets lost but the overall impact on the quality would be astonishingly significant. Lowering the Baud Rate will obviously make you use your VoIP phone service for faxing apart from making the routine phone calls.
Disable the ECM (Error Correction Mode)
Turning off the ECM (Error Correction Mode) can also help a great deal in improving the fax quality. Most of the newly manufactured fax machines have this feature of ECM as built-in. Transmission in fax machines can be lost due to problems like noise, poor signal strength, and packet loss. Once the ECM is enabled and any such problem is detected, then there is a retransmit signal sent to get error free data. Once the retransmit signal is generated, that would obviously result in a lot of delay. When the packet loss reaches around 1.5 to 2 %, almost all the faxes coming in will fail. When you will disable ECM, there won’t be any signals generated for retransmitting. This will allow the faxes with minor problems to be accepted or received. There may be some unnoticeable difference in the quality of the images received through fax but the probability of receiving a better fax with improved overall quality would increase significantly.
Disabling echo cancellation
Echo cancellation is one other important factor that counts in improving the quality of faxes received through your VoIP phone service. The main purpose of Echo cancellation is to reduce the echo and other kinds of distortions when you are talking. There are two types of echoes that exist in VoIP. One is called Hybrid Echo while the other one is Acoustic Echo. Enabling echo cancellation is a good thing for making and receiving phone calls as the phone user will have clear voice quality. But when echo cancellation is enabled, all the data packets of poor quality are lost. However, when we are receiving fax on VoIP phone, enabling echo cancellation would mean loss of data packets. When you lose data packets while receiving fax, obviously you will not be able to receive all the data packets required to have a complete fax. Therefore, make sure when you are using your VoIP phone service for receiving faxes, disable echo cancellation. For all other times echo cancellation must be enabled for crystal clear voice quality.
