Faxing
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@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
@scottalanmiller said in Faxing:
@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
It would also serve as a 'fail over' should your ISP or PBX go down.
This is completely backwards thinking. Why in the hell would you want to fail back to POTS from a pure SIP system? The maintenance and setup alone make it not worth it compared to simply having your provider route calls to a failover number. For your outbound calling, Critical needs can be handled with a cell phone until backup methods of connectivity restore calling via SIP.
In NYS, from the 911 laws/rules that I read, the business is required to provide a POTS line in the event of emergencies.
I've heard of this as a common myth, never heard anyone substantiate it. I believe that I've seen it disproved before, but cannot think of where.
The number of companies that don't or can't have a POTS line is pretty big. This isn't a viable law, IMHO.
This is a recent study produced by NYS and clearly indicates how much POTS connectivity is dropping.
If it were possible to actually require by law people to have traditional POTS, then this would not be happening.
That's good to know. From my understanding it was basically a requirement that you needed a means of communicating with the outside world in the event of an emergency. The under-tone was that it was expected that businesses would have POTS to facilitate that. It may have been an old regulation that has been unenforced or was never on the books. Thanks for the info.
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@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
@scottalanmiller said in Faxing:
@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
It would also serve as a 'fail over' should your ISP or PBX go down.
This is completely backwards thinking. Why in the hell would you want to fail back to POTS from a pure SIP system? The maintenance and setup alone make it not worth it compared to simply having your provider route calls to a failover number. For your outbound calling, Critical needs can be handled with a cell phone until backup methods of connectivity restore calling via SIP.
In NYS, from the 911 laws/rules that I read, the business is required to provide a POTS line in the event of emergencies.
I've heard of this as a common myth, never heard anyone substantiate it. I believe that I've seen it disproved before, but cannot think of where.
The number of companies that don't or can't have a POTS line is pretty big. This isn't a viable law, IMHO.
This is a recent study produced by NYS and clearly indicates how much POTS connectivity is dropping.
If it were possible to actually require by law people to have traditional POTS, then this would not be happening.
That's good to know. From my understanding it was basically a requirement that you needed a means of communicating with the outside world in the event of an emergency. The under-tone was that it was expected that businesses would have POTS to facilitate that. It may have been an old regulation that has been unenforced or was never on the books. Thanks for the info.
There has never been a regulation anywhere that I have worked with VoIP.
That is a complete myth. See my previous post.
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@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
@scottalanmiller said in Faxing:
@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
It would also serve as a 'fail over' should your ISP or PBX go down.
This is completely backwards thinking. Why in the hell would you want to fail back to POTS from a pure SIP system? The maintenance and setup alone make it not worth it compared to simply having your provider route calls to a failover number. For your outbound calling, Critical needs can be handled with a cell phone until backup methods of connectivity restore calling via SIP.
In NYS, from the 911 laws/rules that I read, the business is required to provide a POTS line in the event of emergencies.
I've heard of this as a common myth, never heard anyone substantiate it. I believe that I've seen it disproved before, but cannot think of where.
The number of companies that don't or can't have a POTS line is pretty big. This isn't a viable law, IMHO.
This is a recent study produced by NYS and clearly indicates how much POTS connectivity is dropping.
If it were possible to actually require by law people to have traditional POTS, then this would not be happening.
That's good to know. From my understanding it was basically a requirement that you needed a means of communicating with the outside world in the event of an emergency. The under-tone was that it was expected that businesses would have POTS to facilitate that. It may have been an old regulation that has been unenforced or was never on the books. Thanks for the info.
Also, that is flawed logic. how do you communicate when the POTS line is down?
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@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
@scottalanmiller said in Faxing:
@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
It would also serve as a 'fail over' should your ISP or PBX go down.
This is completely backwards thinking. Why in the hell would you want to fail back to POTS from a pure SIP system? The maintenance and setup alone make it not worth it compared to simply having your provider route calls to a failover number. For your outbound calling, Critical needs can be handled with a cell phone until backup methods of connectivity restore calling via SIP.
In NYS, from the 911 laws/rules that I read, the business is required to provide a POTS line in the event of emergencies.
I've heard of this as a common myth, never heard anyone substantiate it. I believe that I've seen it disproved before, but cannot think of where.
The number of companies that don't or can't have a POTS line is pretty big. This isn't a viable law, IMHO.
This is a recent study produced by NYS and clearly indicates how much POTS connectivity is dropping.
If it were possible to actually require by law people to have traditional POTS, then this would not be happening.
That's good to know. From my understanding it was basically a requirement that you needed a means of communicating with the outside world in the event of an emergency. The under-tone was that it was expected that businesses would have POTS to facilitate that. It may have been an old regulation that has been unenforced or was never on the books. Thanks for the info.
There has never been a regulation anywhere that I have worked with VoIP.
That is a complete myth. See my previous post.
That's fine, appreciate the info.
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@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
@scottalanmiller said in Faxing:
@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
It would also serve as a 'fail over' should your ISP or PBX go down.
This is completely backwards thinking. Why in the hell would you want to fail back to POTS from a pure SIP system? The maintenance and setup alone make it not worth it compared to simply having your provider route calls to a failover number. For your outbound calling, Critical needs can be handled with a cell phone until backup methods of connectivity restore calling via SIP.
In NYS, from the 911 laws/rules that I read, the business is required to provide a POTS line in the event of emergencies.
I've heard of this as a common myth, never heard anyone substantiate it. I believe that I've seen it disproved before, but cannot think of where.
The number of companies that don't or can't have a POTS line is pretty big. This isn't a viable law, IMHO.
This is a recent study produced by NYS and clearly indicates how much POTS connectivity is dropping.
If it were possible to actually require by law people to have traditional POTS, then this would not be happening.
That's good to know. From my understanding it was basically a requirement that you needed a means of communicating with the outside world in the event of an emergency. The under-tone was that it was expected that businesses would have POTS to facilitate that. It may have been an old regulation that has been unenforced or was never on the books. Thanks for the info.
Also, that is flawed logic. how do you communicate when the POTS line is down?
Where we live the POTS line is much more reliable then the internet line. I get where you're coming from though. I can see where my thinking is flawed I appreciate you pointing it out.
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@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
@scottalanmiller said in Faxing:
@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
It would also serve as a 'fail over' should your ISP or PBX go down.
This is completely backwards thinking. Why in the hell would you want to fail back to POTS from a pure SIP system? The maintenance and setup alone make it not worth it compared to simply having your provider route calls to a failover number. For your outbound calling, Critical needs can be handled with a cell phone until backup methods of connectivity restore calling via SIP.
In NYS, from the 911 laws/rules that I read, the business is required to provide a POTS line in the event of emergencies.
I've heard of this as a common myth, never heard anyone substantiate it. I believe that I've seen it disproved before, but cannot think of where.
The number of companies that don't or can't have a POTS line is pretty big. This isn't a viable law, IMHO.
This is a recent study produced by NYS and clearly indicates how much POTS connectivity is dropping.
If it were possible to actually require by law people to have traditional POTS, then this would not be happening.
That's good to know. From my understanding it was basically a requirement that you needed a means of communicating with the outside world in the event of an emergency. The under-tone was that it was expected that businesses would have POTS to facilitate that. It may have been an old regulation that has been unenforced or was never on the books. Thanks for the info.
Ah yes, means to communicate, definitely. But that it needs to be POTS is what I've never seen.
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@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
@scottalanmiller said in Faxing:
@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
It would also serve as a 'fail over' should your ISP or PBX go down.
This is completely backwards thinking. Why in the hell would you want to fail back to POTS from a pure SIP system? The maintenance and setup alone make it not worth it compared to simply having your provider route calls to a failover number. For your outbound calling, Critical needs can be handled with a cell phone until backup methods of connectivity restore calling via SIP.
In NYS, from the 911 laws/rules that I read, the business is required to provide a POTS line in the event of emergencies.
I've heard of this as a common myth, never heard anyone substantiate it. I believe that I've seen it disproved before, but cannot think of where.
The number of companies that don't or can't have a POTS line is pretty big. This isn't a viable law, IMHO.
This is a recent study produced by NYS and clearly indicates how much POTS connectivity is dropping.
If it were possible to actually require by law people to have traditional POTS, then this would not be happening.
That's good to know. From my understanding it was basically a requirement that you needed a means of communicating with the outside world in the event of an emergency. The under-tone was that it was expected that businesses would have POTS to facilitate that. It may have been an old regulation that has been unenforced or was never on the books. Thanks for the info.
Also, that is flawed logic. how do you communicate when the POTS line is down?
Which in NY is relatively often.
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@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
@scottalanmiller said in Faxing:
@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
It would also serve as a 'fail over' should your ISP or PBX go down.
This is completely backwards thinking. Why in the hell would you want to fail back to POTS from a pure SIP system? The maintenance and setup alone make it not worth it compared to simply having your provider route calls to a failover number. For your outbound calling, Critical needs can be handled with a cell phone until backup methods of connectivity restore calling via SIP.
In NYS, from the 911 laws/rules that I read, the business is required to provide a POTS line in the event of emergencies.
I've heard of this as a common myth, never heard anyone substantiate it. I believe that I've seen it disproved before, but cannot think of where.
The number of companies that don't or can't have a POTS line is pretty big. This isn't a viable law, IMHO.
This is a recent study produced by NYS and clearly indicates how much POTS connectivity is dropping.
If it were possible to actually require by law people to have traditional POTS, then this would not be happening.
That's good to know. From my understanding it was basically a requirement that you needed a means of communicating with the outside world in the event of an emergency. The under-tone was that it was expected that businesses would have POTS to facilitate that. It may have been an old regulation that has been unenforced or was never on the books. Thanks for the info.
Also, that is flawed logic. how do you communicate when the POTS line is down?
Where we live the POTS line is much more reliable then the internet line. I get where you're coming from though. I can see where my thinking is flawed I appreciate you pointing it out.
I've had POTS outages in NY going into the months range. Rare, but it happens.
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@scottalanmiller said in Faxing:
@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
@scottalanmiller said in Faxing:
@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
It would also serve as a 'fail over' should your ISP or PBX go down.
This is completely backwards thinking. Why in the hell would you want to fail back to POTS from a pure SIP system? The maintenance and setup alone make it not worth it compared to simply having your provider route calls to a failover number. For your outbound calling, Critical needs can be handled with a cell phone until backup methods of connectivity restore calling via SIP.
In NYS, from the 911 laws/rules that I read, the business is required to provide a POTS line in the event of emergencies.
I've heard of this as a common myth, never heard anyone substantiate it. I believe that I've seen it disproved before, but cannot think of where.
The number of companies that don't or can't have a POTS line is pretty big. This isn't a viable law, IMHO.
This is a recent study produced by NYS and clearly indicates how much POTS connectivity is dropping.
If it were possible to actually require by law people to have traditional POTS, then this would not be happening.
That's good to know. From my understanding it was basically a requirement that you needed a means of communicating with the outside world in the event of an emergency. The under-tone was that it was expected that businesses would have POTS to facilitate that. It may have been an old regulation that has been unenforced or was never on the books. Thanks for the info.
Ah yes, means to communicate, definitely. But that it needs to be POTS is what I've never seen.
Right, I don't think I've ever seen the POTS requirement, that's my bad for saying it. Just that it was the only thing that made sense in our area. Cell service is basically non-existent and the internet is unreliable.
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@scottalanmiller said in Faxing:
@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
@scottalanmiller said in Faxing:
@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
It would also serve as a 'fail over' should your ISP or PBX go down.
This is completely backwards thinking. Why in the hell would you want to fail back to POTS from a pure SIP system? The maintenance and setup alone make it not worth it compared to simply having your provider route calls to a failover number. For your outbound calling, Critical needs can be handled with a cell phone until backup methods of connectivity restore calling via SIP.
In NYS, from the 911 laws/rules that I read, the business is required to provide a POTS line in the event of emergencies.
I've heard of this as a common myth, never heard anyone substantiate it. I believe that I've seen it disproved before, but cannot think of where.
The number of companies that don't or can't have a POTS line is pretty big. This isn't a viable law, IMHO.
This is a recent study produced by NYS and clearly indicates how much POTS connectivity is dropping.
If it were possible to actually require by law people to have traditional POTS, then this would not be happening.
That's good to know. From my understanding it was basically a requirement that you needed a means of communicating with the outside world in the event of an emergency. The under-tone was that it was expected that businesses would have POTS to facilitate that. It may have been an old regulation that has been unenforced or was never on the books. Thanks for the info.
Ah yes, means to communicate, definitely. But that it needs to be POTS is what I've never seen.
Right, I don't think I've ever seen the POTS requirement, that's my bad for saying it. Just that it was the only thing that made sense in our area. Cell service is basically non-existent and the internet is unreliable.
After looking at that PDF, I have a feeling I know where you live.
They had pretty state graphs of coverage for various services. -
@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
@scottalanmiller said in Faxing:
@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
@scottalanmiller said in Faxing:
@JaredBusch said in Faxing:
It would also serve as a 'fail over' should your ISP or PBX go down.
This is completely backwards thinking. Why in the hell would you want to fail back to POTS from a pure SIP system? The maintenance and setup alone make it not worth it compared to simply having your provider route calls to a failover number. For your outbound calling, Critical needs can be handled with a cell phone until backup methods of connectivity restore calling via SIP.
In NYS, from the 911 laws/rules that I read, the business is required to provide a POTS line in the event of emergencies.
I've heard of this as a common myth, never heard anyone substantiate it. I believe that I've seen it disproved before, but cannot think of where.
The number of companies that don't or can't have a POTS line is pretty big. This isn't a viable law, IMHO.
This is a recent study produced by NYS and clearly indicates how much POTS connectivity is dropping.
If it were possible to actually require by law people to have traditional POTS, then this would not be happening.
That's good to know. From my understanding it was basically a requirement that you needed a means of communicating with the outside world in the event of an emergency. The under-tone was that it was expected that businesses would have POTS to facilitate that. It may have been an old regulation that has been unenforced or was never on the books. Thanks for the info.
Ah yes, means to communicate, definitely. But that it needs to be POTS is what I've never seen.
Right, I don't think I've ever seen the POTS requirement, that's my bad for saying it. Just that it was the only thing that made sense in our area. Cell service is basically non-existent and the internet is unreliable.
After looking at that PDF, I have a feeling I know where you live.
They had pretty state graphs of coverage for various services.Just look for the area with no cell service, mediocre internet coverage, and expensive POTS coverage.
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@scottalanmiller said in Faxing:
Depends on the use case. Faxing through the FreePBX is an option. But most places that use faxing heavily still go with a hosted service just for that.
They do? I guess they must be low volume users. I looked at a hosted solution, they wanted $1300/mth for 16K pages a month.
My inhouse solution costs me around $100/month... Almost nothing makes then worth 13x the cost.
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Our business refuses to get a fax, we'll never have a fax, and when people want to fax us things, I explain to them what email is. If they need something faxed from me, they simply don't receive it. Usually when you refuse people do open up to other things, more often than not they will print a PDF to fax, or upload it to an efax solution which in turn goes to another efax solution, so it's really just slow, unreliable email which does not produce digital copies.
I do realise many businesses cannot function like this, and I feel bad for them.
On a sadder note, I've been involved in several arguments on Spiceworks about the security of fax, some people still think it's more secure to send PHI over fax when you don't know who will get it or how it will be disposed of on the other end, compared to an encrypted email -- SAM was even involved in one. The logic is "well anyone could read the email." Ugh...
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@tonyshowoff said in Faxing:
On a sadder note, I've been involved in several arguments on Spiceworks about the security of fax, some people still think it's more secure to send PHI over fax when you don't know who will get it or how it will be disposed of on the other end, compared to an encrypted email -- SAM was even involved in one. The logic is "well anyone could read the email." Ugh...
Scott has been saying for years that regular email is more secure than faxing - that I'll never agree with.
There are two main areas that I know use faxing a ton still, Lawyers and Doctors. Both of them require *secure" communications when using something other than fax. Secure email is a huge pain in the ass, there is no single uniform standard. Faxing is an easy to implement solution that is standard everywhere - like SMS messaging. It's just there, it works, delivering it to an office not a person has always been considered good enough.
I so want to see a better solution put in place, and Direct Messaging is a promising step/solution to this problem which is only possible because the EHR vendors are looking for a better way of moving this data around. DM works by having EHRs be part of a Health Information Exchange network (HIE). These HIE's have email servers with certificates setup for each entity within the system that's been given one, the HIE's, though the OCR trust each other to be valid allowable representatives of those entities. So if your doc needs to send Continuity of Care documentation to another doc, the EHR looks to the HIE, who looks to their know HIEs to see if the other doc participates, if so, their public key is retrieved, the message encrypted and sent.
Of course this system isn't free. It also suffers from the problem where each doctor will have a different DM address for each system they participate in, depending upon who owns the chart where the doc is seeing that patient. This is a kin to you having multiple phone numbers, a home phone, a cell phone, a business phone, etc.
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@Dashrender What makes you think a fax is secure? there is no encryption, there's no verification of who it's going to or who got it. A plain text email is more secure than a Fax. just because Doctors and lawyers like doing things wrong doesn't mean everyone else should.
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@Dashrender What makes you think a fax is secure? there is no encryption, there's no verification of who it's going to or who got it. A plain text email is more secure than a Fax. just because Doctors and lawyers like doing things wrong doesn't mean everyone else should.
Or since a lot of places have a big Copier or MFP that receives their faxes, someone just does a quick photo copy of the paper laying on the tray.
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email goes over an unencrypted network that can be easily tapped by spies. Tapping a POTS line (not a SIP trunk) is much harder and requires local access to the end points, or hacking into the phone companies systems. These alone in my opinion make it more secure - nothing Scott or anyone else has said why an email sent over the internet is more secure than this situation.
As for the fax printing out on a MFP sitting in the middle of the office. Sure, so this is one area where email clearly wins out. Though in my case, in medical cases, there are very little if any limitations on who can/should be able to see anything medical coming in on the fax machine. Sending an email to a single person wouldn't be an acceptable solution for us. We need to make sure we have a team of people who are responsible for accepting and processing faxes. They shouldn't not get handled just because someone is on vacation, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I want to get rid of faxes as badly as the next guy on these forums. DM's will hopefully provide us with this. DM's are accepted by our EHR on behalf of our providers, and we task the EHR to dump them into a centralized bucket that our staff are tasked to check and manage.
I just wish this HIE/cert setup could be applied to email globally for free, but verifying ownership of an email account isn't free, so this is likely to never happen.
Though Secure DNS would be a great first step toward making it much less expensive. Secure DNS could publish the public cert for your domain's email server, at least ensuring that you're email server is where the email came from, though getting user level verification would still be difficult.
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@Dashrender said in Faxing:
email goes over an unencrypted network
Um, you do realize the majority of email is encrypted in transit (SSL).. just not at rest. There are very few providers not supporting encryption in transit now. If your server is setup for it, it will negotiate
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@Dashrender said in Faxing:
As for the fax printing out on a MFP sitting in the middle of the office. Sure, so this is one area where email clearly wins out. Though in my case, in medical cases, there are very little if any limitations on who can/should be able to see anything medical coming in on the fax machine.
So What's the access control method for the Fax machine? is there a door with a biometric lock, pin code or what? Otherwise anyone in the office should be consider as potentially seeing any information sent.
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Fax machines will be the first wave in the zombie apocalypse.
Melt them with thermite now to prevent this.
