With the demise of Sunrocket I lost my fax number. I used Sunrocket's signature number (second number on primary line) with distinctive ring to route faxes to the VentaFax service on my Vista workstation. When I moved my main Sunrocket number to T-Mobile, I left out the signature number since T-Mobile's HotSpot@Home service does not offer a UMA Terminal Adapter to hook up wired phones and fax machines. This left me without an inbound fax solution.
My two options were to subscribe to a fax service or use my land line. Since I don't receive many faxes it did not make sense to pay a monthly subscription fee. I also did not want to dedicate my land line to incoming faxes since this is the number we usually give out as our home phone. I could purchase a second number for the land line and use distinctive ring but there again the additional cost was not justified. The solution was to find a reasonably priced fax switch. A fax switch listens to the traffic on the line without answering or taking it off hook. Newer fax machine emit CNG tones, these tones are detected by fax switches which automatically route the fax call to a connected fax machine or in my case a fax modem.
I found ComSwitch 3.0 from Command Communications, Inc. It has many more options than I need, including TeleZapper, but was the simplest and cheapest solution at $59.99. I received it late last week, installed and tested it over the weekend. I use the default settings and it works very well. When an incoming fax arrives it switches the call silently and the fax modem picks up before any phone rings. VentaFax then emails me the fax. If a fax call should come through on a regular phone you can easily reroute it to the fax machine/modem by pressing #11.
Sunrocket goes out of business, I move to T-Mobile HotSpot@Home
Last Monday, noticed a red light on my Sunrocket Gizmo signaling a problem with the service. After a quick search on the net it became clear that Sunrocket had shutdown its service without notifying users. You can still use the service by rebooting the Gizmo, however nobody knows how long that will last.
I feel I was one of the lucky ones, my 1 year contract was suppose to end at the beginning of August. I was to get 3 months free which would take me to the beginning of November. I have read many posts where individuals had almost a full year left.
It is really too bad they ran out of money, the service was reliable and the connection quality had gotten better and better. Now I needed to decide on how to proceed. The number of VOIP providers has grown and many are giving deals to Sunrocket customers. With the lawsuits and onslaught from the cable companies VOIP is a tough market. Costs have been creeping up slowly and the major providers such as Vonage, AT&T and Verizon are charging $24.95 a month. I do not want to take the chance with a small provider. Since I have been testing T-Mobile's HotSpot@Home service, I decided that this was the cheapest (among major carriers) and safest alternative. Unfortunately HotSpots@Home is not yet available on Windows Mobile, so I had to get another line and a Samsung T-409. This is fine since it is a line for my business. The current cost is $9.99 for the line (add on to Family plan) and $9.99 for HotSpot@Home ($19.99 for all the lines in a family plan). Cheaper than the major VOIP providers. Yes, it is more expensive than Sunrocket but this is the price you pay for corporate stability. It seems clear that VOIP providers offering the $199 per year plan are selling the service at an unsustainable price point.
With this approach I have three issues I need solve:
I think this is the best long term solution for us, although it is a work in progress. Long term it would be nice to go from 4 numbers (2 each for my wife and I) down to 2. With a UMA terminal adapter and Windows Mobile compatibility that would be possible.
Posted by sskarlatos on July 20, 2007 at 08:16 AM in Commentary, Dock-N-Talk, GSM, Hotspot@Home, SunRocket, T-Mobile, UMA | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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