Incomming Voice calls on a Dedicated Fax Line

Posts: 19

Good Day Everyone,

I have searched thru the forum looking for anything similar, and at best I have found that you can make a fax call from a voice line. I'm Curious if I can do it the other way around. Below is my scenario:

My dad has 2 pots lines, 1 fax and 1 phone. He also has 2 cell phones (1 work, 1 personal) so if the Voip goes down, its no big deal.
I got him to move to Vonage for his voiceline, but our curiosity lies with the fax line. It's appealing to add a dedicated fax for $10, becuase that is the primary function of the line. However occasionally he might need to use the fax line for an outbound call if line 1 is tied up. Looking into the option of just adding a second line for an extra $15 instead is OK, but I still can't find out how well an incomming fax works over a non dedicated fax line. So to sum it up, if any one has answers to:

Can an incomming fax be received on a voice line?
Can an incomming voice call be received on a dedicated fax line?
Can an outgoing call be made on a dedicated fax line?

If these are possible, please list ot point to somewhere with the proper procedures.

Thanks,
Have a great day

P.S. I managed to finaly convince him to switch, after demo'ing my softphone on my ipaq. Works great, if anyone has any questions about that setup let me know.

Posts: 196

colesch wrote:

Good Day Everyone,

I have searched thru the forum looking for anything similar, and at best I have found that you can make a fax call from a voice line. I'm Curious if I can do it the other way around. Below is my scenario:

Can an incomming fax be received on a voice line?
Can an incomming voice call be received on a dedicated fax line?
Can an outgoing call be made on a dedicated fax line?

If these are possible, please list ot point to somewhere with the proper procedures.

Thanks,
Have a great day

P.S. I managed to finaly convince him to switch, after demo'ing my softphone on my ipaq. Works great, if anyone has any questions about that setup let me know.

In a short answer to your three questions, YES, YES and YES.

Posts: 19 · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2005 3:30 pm Post subject:

Can anyone provide anymore specifics?

I understand how *99 works, but what is required to place a voice call over the fax line?

Posts: 2251 · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2005 3:38 pm Post subject:

colesch wrote:

Can anyone provide anymore specifics?

I understand how *99 works, but what is required to place a voice call over the fax line?

Nothing, just dial out. Think of the fax line as a no features line, i.e., no caller ID, no voicemail, no call waiting...

Posts: 64 · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2005 4:35 pm Post subject:

FAX lines DO have caller ID. Just nothing else to speak of.

Posts: 482 · Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 5:19 pm Post subject:

On the Linksys units, I've read that line 1 doesn't work with FAX signals, but why? The Motorola units seem to do it just fine.

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 5:20 pm Post subject:

where have you seen this?

Posts: 482 · Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 5:52 pm Post subject:

Seen what, that a fax machine won't work on a voice line? I believe I've read it here many times. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I thought like TiVo or DirecTV that people had trouble getting it to work reliably. I'm jsut about positive I've read threads before where people were upset that they had to pay for a fax line for that very reason. Doesn't ring a bell?

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 6:22 pm Post subject:

yeah problems, but one could also say I've heard line 1 doesn't work with voice because I;ve seen all kinds of posts with one way audio, garbled audio, etc etc.
in other words, some people have problems with it, some don't, but it has nothing to do with phone port 1. if that were the case, switching your service to line 2 would fix it.

Posts: 482 · Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2005 10:08 pm Post subject:

I didn't literally mean port 1...I thought I said "line 1" meaning your voice line (or what I really meant was your only line).

Let me rephrase the question. If someone has issues getting a fax to work over their regular voice line, why does paying for a dedicated fax line reportedly resolve the problem? It doesn't make much sense to me, since either way you are using the same hardware Voip adapter.

Is Vonage implementing some sort of technical inhibitor to make faxing less reliable on a regular voice line? That's about the only way this makes any sense to me. Otherwise, all the people who say getting a dedicated fax resolved the problem would have had the same success just asking Vonage to switch their voice line to the other port.