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Ask HN: Why can't I send faxes from my phone?

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Re: Ask HN: Why can't I send faxes from my phone?

#11
post #7
post #3

The lossy compression on phone calls might prevent fax from working. Also, I don't know if you can route call audio from anywhere other than the microphone.

HQ audio quality (over 4G) is markedly better than land lines, and the fax protocol has had error correction since digital formats were adopted in the 60s and 70s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fax My Palm Pilot (with a CDPD backpack) and candybar 2G Nokia could both send FAXes. I suspect there's no demand.

Fax has an ip protocol called t.38 however it is inconsistently implemented. Most services still rely on g.711 - essentially uncompressed voice - for transmission of fax tones. However there is no guarantee the end to end call will be g.711 even if specified during call setup. There is an app called eFax - unfortunately the service is not free but I as a subscriber routinely fax over the phone when it’s the only way to communicate (like with a doc office).

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I send faxes from my phone?

#13
The fax requires a 56KHz channel which has not been used for mobile telephony since the 1980s (when AMPS and GSM were developed. Before then it was just a radio link through an operator). That’s why you can’t use a high speed modem either.

Some gsm phones had the ability to transmit a fax but they actually used a different protocol to talk to a fax gateway. I never saw one of these in the wild.

I haven’t been in that “biz” for a couple of decades but nowadays a different approach will be used anyway (pdf via IP to a fax gateway -> POTS)

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I send faxes from my phone?

#14
post #2

To send a fax you need access to a handhshaked landline. A direct wire between the stations. Faxes synchronize themselves, send data and test the bit, makeing sure it is properlt placed in the data queue, and send the next and so on =handshake. Suggest you look up old fax synchronization and I tossed my last muirhead rotary in 1982 - used it for weather maps. https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/fax/history-…

What exactly makes this "hard via radio"?

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I send faxes from my phone?

#15
post #14
post #2

To send a fax you need access to a handhshaked landline. A direct wire between the stations. Faxes synchronize themselves, send data and test the bit, makeing sure it is properlt placed in the data queue, and send the next and so on =handshake. Suggest you look up old fax synchronization and I tossed my last muirhead rotary in 1982 - used it for weather maps. https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/fax/history-…

What exactly makes this "hard via radio"?

The codec used in calls to landlines disallows the bandwidth required.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I send faxes from my phone?

#16
Founder of Phaxio here. Doing fax well is an annoying problem because the protocols are finicy and the carriers don't usually want to spend time troubleshooting issues.

Give our API a shot and shoot me a note for some extra credits as a h/t to a fellow HNer. (See profile for email.)

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I send faxes from my phone?

#17
post #7
post #3

The lossy compression on phone calls might prevent fax from working. Also, I don't know if you can route call audio from anywhere other than the microphone.

HQ audio quality (over 4G) is markedly better than land lines, and the fax protocol has had error correction since digital formats were adopted in the 60s and 70s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fax My Palm Pilot (with a CDPD backpack) and candybar 2G Nokia could both send FAXes. I suspect there's no demand.

The parent’s post is correct. While the perceived quality is much higher, modern cellphones use a lossy format optimized for voice communication.

From an engineering perspective, having a billion cellphones faithfully transmitting info on frequencies humans can’t hear is simply wasteful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_code...

“AMR was adopted as the standard speech codec by 3GPP in October 1999 and is now widely used in GSM[5] and UMTS.”

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I send faxes from my phone?

#18

Founder of Phaxio here. Doing fax well is an annoying problem because the protocols are finicy and the carriers don't usually want to spend time troubleshooting issues. Give our API a shot and shoot me a note for some extra credits as a h/t to a fellow HNer. (See profile for email.)

Great product. No affiliation, just a satisfied user.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I send faxes from my phone?

#20
post #13

The fax requires a 56KHz channel which has not been used for mobile telephony since the 1980s (when AMPS and GSM were developed. Before then it was just a radio link through an operator). That’s why you can’t use a high speed modem either. Some gsm phones had the ability to transmit a fax but they actually used a different protocol to talk to a fax gateway. I never saw one of these in the wild. I haven’t been in that…

CDMA also had a fax technology, under I think IS-95 data, but I didn't work on it myself. I've been out of the industry a couple years myself, but there were still a handful of customers using it that kept delaying the shutdown of the old tech, and there wasn't really an upgrade path.

IIRC from the water cooler talk, one of the remaining customers was a lighthouse, that had to send a daily report, things like that.

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