Fibre Landline and faxability?

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15 posts

Geek

#1374524 26-Aug-2015 11:26

I have been after Spark for the past couple of months on this issue. My fax service stopped working ever since my connection was changed to a unified fibre line in June. Spark has become one of the most inefficient organisation in New Zealand of late. They keep giving all sorts of lame excuses just to escape responsibility. Some of their classic responses are "We have tried ringing your fax number and it's just ringing like a normal number", "We have checked and tested your line and found out that the faxability service is already activated on your phone all you need to do is turn it on." "Given that your phone is working, technician will not going to check the line in your property", "We have done a test on your line and it has come back as a Good Line". Even though I have repeatedly informed them that I am neither able to receive or send faxes ever since the changeover to a unified fibre line, they have not made any real efforts in resolving the issue.

I have now requested them to change the ring pattern and am hoping that the issue gets resolved failing which I have decided to take this up with the Telecommunication Dispute Resolution service.

sbiddle

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#1374526 26-Aug-2015 11:28

nknz: I have been after Spark for the past couple of months on this issue. My fax service stopped working ever since my connection was changed to a unified fibre line in June. Spark has become one of the most inefficient organisation in New Zealand of late. They keep giving all sorts of lame excuses just to escape responsibility. Some of their classic responses are "We have tried ringing your fax number and it's just ringing like a normal number", "We have checked and tested your line and found out that the faxability service is already activated on your phone all you need to do is turn it on." "Given that your phone is working, technician will not going to check the line in your property", "We have done a test on your line and it has come back as a Good Line". Even though I have repeatedly informed them that I am neither able to receive or send faxes ever since the changeover to a unified fibre line, they have not made any real efforts in resolving the issue.

I have now requested them to change the ring pattern and am hoping that the issue gets resolved failing which I have decided to take this up with the Telecommunication Dispute Resolution service.

What happens when to the ring pattern when you ring your faxability number with a normal phone plugged in? What DR pattern is it playing?

nknz

15 posts

Geek

#1374541 26-Aug-2015 11:38

The pattern is LONG LONG Pause LONG LONG and it goes on till it reaches my voice mail.

Guv

94 posts

Master Geek

#1374547 26-Aug-2015 12:02

You can change the distinctive ring patterns which the brother devices use - I had to do this a while back. There are four to try - I just tried them until I found one which worked.

- http://support.brother.com/g/b/faqend.aspx?c=gb&lang=en&prod=mfc7360n_all&faqid=faq00000305_009

grant_k

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#1374551 26-Aug-2015 12:10

nknz: The pattern is LONG LONG Pause LONG LONG and it goes on till it reaches my voice mail.

That sounds like the normal ring pattern to me. Trouble is, if you change the settings in your fax machine to match, it will answer voice calls too.

I had the same issue with my Brother MFC when I switched to a VoIP line some years ago. The solution for me was to susbscribe to a fax to email service at some paltry cost per month and get my incoming faxes via my email. Then just use the Brother to send outgoing faxes only. It worked like a charm and I didn't need to worry if the Brother ran out of ink or whatever, my incoming faxes would still be received.

clayton

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#1374553 26-Aug-2015 12:11

I have been working with Brother testing Faxability on Fibre landline as they don't have Fibre where they are in Tauranga.
Machines that have been tested are:

MFC-L8850CDW
MFC-L2740DW
MFC-9140CN
MFC-J5320DW
FAX-2840
MFC-9450CDN
MFC-7340

I mainly tested the MFC-L8850CDW with the 3 different Cadence and Compatibility settings changed to High, Normal and Basic (VOIP) and would not work.

The 2 machines that did work were the

MFC-9450CDN
MFC-7340

Not sure on what Cadence it worked, DA4 is the default maybe 2 or 3. I will be testing some Oki printers tomorrow and will post the results here.

I remember about 15 years ago I had a Vodafone mobile fax number which I used to forward faxes when I was out of town, once I received a fax to that number it would send me a message saying "Call 707 to hear 1 fax." so I would access the mailbox on my phone and forward the fax to a fax number I was next to.
I forgot what the number was and rang Vodafone to see if they knew and was told we don't have that feature, goes to show what they know, anyway I finally found it and tested it and works perfectly.

Would still like my faxability to work.

nknz

15 posts

Geek

#1374572 26-Aug-2015 13:08

I am unable to change the distinctive ring pattern on my brother MFC685CW machine. I am also unable to send fax messages after the changeover to the unified fibre line. Thanks.

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Zeon

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#1374594 26-Aug-2015 13:26

Seriously why not just fax to email for incoming faxes? You can probably get some small programme that would mintor the mailbox and print out any attached PDFs automatically so it feels like a fax!

Speedtest 2019-10-14

nknz

15 posts

Geek

#1374600 26-Aug-2015 13:42

Is it possible to send faxes using this facility? Since I am already paying Spark for the faxability service, I feel it is their responsibility to ensure that the service is working.

grant_k

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#1374621 26-Aug-2015 13:57

nknz: Is it possible to send faxes using this facility? Since I am already paying Spark for the faxability service, I feel it is their responsibility to ensure that the service is working.

Do you want to send faxes within NZ or Internationally?

I found that International faxes no longer worked with my Brother MFC over a VoIP connection. If you must have that, then you will need to stick with copper, or just send them by scan-and-email.

nknz

15 posts

Geek

#1374624 26-Aug-2015 14:03

Currently I am unable to even send local faxes. Let us see how long Spark takes to resolve the issue.

BarTender

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#1374678 26-Aug-2015 15:03

You can request which Distinctive Ring option between DA2, 3 and 4 as long as you have the Premium Pack that gives you the secondary number. You just need to ring up and ask for the Distinctive to be changed.

clayton

342 posts

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#1374680 26-Aug-2015 15:04

Just tested a OKI ES4191 and works fine on Fibre landline faxability

grant_k

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#1374704 26-Aug-2015 15:18

clayton: Just tested a OKI ES4191 and works fine on Fibre landline faxability

Interesting! I've heard that Oki MFCs are a cut above the rest.

I tried 2 different MFCs using Fax over VoIP and the Brother was the worst with some faxes failing for reasons unknown. Basically it was a POS electronically, whereas the HP OfficeJet would send faxes within NZ OK, but its paper feeder kept jamming. Such a pain so in the end I dumped them both and now do everything by email.

clayton

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#1374717 26-Aug-2015 15:49

The last 2 Brother models in my previous post that actually worked on fibre faxability were around 5 years old the others are new, I covered a lot of combinations while testing even checking the voltages coming down the line when the line was in use and was the same as the copper line.
Brother NZ is still in contact with Brother Japan with communication reports from different printers to see what is different between the machines that work and don't work, Chorus may still be using older faxability technology through fibre, Brother Japan is requesting information that only Chorus knows or should know but they don't appear helpful.

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