Many businesses are upgrading their phone systems to VoIP, but an old technology is coming along with them: fax. Dialogic (News - Alert), a major provider of VoIP software, and T38Fax.com have announced successful interoperability testing between Dialogic’s Brooktrout SR140 with a T.38 FoIP (Fax over IP) system.

“To recognize the true power and reliability of Brooktrout (News - Alert) SR140, one requires a T.38 FoIP service provider with a robust and feature-rich T.38 implementation, plus expertise in T.38 in general and SR140 in particular." said Jim Machi, senior vice president of Marketing at Dialogic. We are thrilled with T38Fax.com’s entry to the SIP service provider market, and are very pleased they have selected SR140 as their primary interop platform. We are proud to add them to our FoIP interoperability list."

While many people have moved onto sending documents via email attachments, there are still some uses for fax. Important documents like contracts are still sent through fax, as electronic signatures aren’t legally recognized in some places. It is also harder to forge documents sent through fax than it is through email.

While it is possible to use a fax machine over a VoIP network just by plugging it in and dialing a number, VoIP uses compression techniques that are optimized for voice. These subtle differences can disrupt a fax transmission.

T.38 is a protocol that supports fax transmissions over VoIP networks. Provider like T38Fax.com have the advantage of letting businesses replace dedicated fax machines with fax servers that convert faxes into documents such as PDF to be sent by email. This eliminates a lot of wasted paper.

“We are excited to have our fax-optimized SIP service validated for interoperability with Dialogic’s Brooktrout SR140 Software," said Darren Nickerson, President of T38Fax.com. “As fax industry veterans, we recognize SR140 as the undisputed market leader when it comes to T.38, and we are excited to be able to offer SR140 customers and Dialogic partners a very high-quality T.38 provider - something we feel has been in very short supply."