OBiTALK Community

General Support => New to Using the OBi / VoIP => Topic started by: schmitta on September 01, 2017, 11:27:00 PM

Title: Three lines
Post by: schmitta on September 01, 2017, 11:27:00 PM
I need three lines: one for home; one for office and one for fax. How would I do this with OBI equipment and VoIP?
Title: Re: Three lines
Post by: drgeoff on September 02, 2017, 01:39:44 AM
OBi2xx series devices can support 1 to 4 VoIP "lines" (ie numbers or accounts) but have  have only 1 (OBi200 and Obi212) or 2 (OBi202) ports to connect phone or fax machine.

If you require all 3 of your home, office and fax end-points to be truly independent and all able to be active on calls at the same time then you need at least 3 phone ports.  Another factor is the physical layout and wiring.  Is it easier for you to have two OBi200s with ethernet cabling or OBiWiFi adaptor, each close to the phone or fax than an OBi202 and phone cabling to the end-points?

You may be able to put both office phone and fax on a single phone port even if they have separate incoming numbers.  If your fax machine supports "distinctive ringing" the OBi can be configured that calls to the fax number have a different cadence which the fax machine recognises and picks up.  Of course you can't have fax and phone in use simultaneously.

So 2 ports or 3?

Then how to achieve those 2 or 3?  A single OBi202 or a pair of them or a 202 plus a 200 or 3 off 200s?  Or even a pair of 202s which gives you scope for expansion.

And if you want to retain or ever add a true POTS line or a VoIP line with a POTS style presentation (such as your Comcast one) the the recently available Obi212 may be of interest.  It has one PHONE jack and one POTS jack. 
Title: Re: Three lines
Post by: schmitta on September 02, 2017, 06:29:13 PM
Thank you for all the help you have given me.
Title: Re: Three lines
Post by: azrobert on September 02, 2017, 11:08:55 PM
drgeoff said:
QuoteYou may be able to put both office phone and fax on a single phone port even if they have separate incoming numbers.  If your fax machine supports "distinctive ringing" the OBi can be configured that calls to the fax number have a different cadence which the fax machine recognises and picks up.  Of course you can't have fax and phone in use simultaneously.

When sharing a port between a phone and fax, there isn't a problem with outbound faxes because you know when the phone port is busy. You don't have the same control with inbound faxes. You could use a Fax to Email service for inbound faxes. Callcentric has a free account (IP Freedom) which includes a Fax to Email service. You could forward all inbound faxes to this service. Alternately, you can only forward inbound faxes when the phone port is busy. If you're interested, I'll show you how to configure this.

https://www.callcentric.com/rate/plans/ip_freedom/
https://www.callcentric.com/features/fax_reception