Forwarding is Not the Answer

Last month, we went over some ways to set up a new account when a client has an existing fax number. One option was to forward the number to another number.  However this is not the best choice. There are several technical considerations why not:

• Forwarding introduces another hop and contributes to a fax failure rate that is well above 50%.
• Faxing is very susceptible to noise & jitter; essentially all forms of poor line condition.
• Lost or missing pages; pages cut-off half way through.
• Time is important and any delays can also cause issues.
• High connection failure rate when forwarding numbers.

We don’t recommend you forward fax numbers for these reasons. A better option is to keep the existing service active until the number ports and provide a temporary fax number in the interim.

William Jordan, FaxSIPit Manager of Operations