The State of T.38 FoIP Interoperability Over SIP Carrier Networks

Many organizations all in all rely heavily on fax communications as part of their daily business processes. Too often, amid newly deployed VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and unified communications infrastructures, organizations overlook implementing fax as part of their converged IP strategy.

That’s where T.38 fax over IP interoperability over SIP carrier networks comes in. T.38 is a communications standard recommendation for allowing transmission of fax over IP networks in real time. FoIP works via T.38, where T.38 is a protocol that describes how to send a fax over a computer data network.

T.38 provides a real-time transmission support with multi-vendor interoperability and a robust redundancy mechanism. These attributes are some of the main reasons why T.38 interoperability over SIP carrier networks has risen to be the de facto standard for FoIP communications and why T.38 interoperability over SIP carrier networks should be a first choice when selecting a fax transport solution for any network.

Gonzalo Salgueiro, senior engineer at the Cisco Technical Assistance Center gave his two cents on the state of T.38 interoperability over SIP carrier networks at Cisco Live 2011 in Las Vegas recently.

According to i3forum.org, the goal of the i3 Forum is to develop collaborative recommendations for an industry-wide transition of voice and related services to Internet Protocol. The forum's unified effort to expedite global IP-based voice implementation will enhance worldwide communication by supporting widespread access to innovative and high quality IP-based services and applications.