VOIP etc > Voice Over IP - VOIP > VOIP Tech Chat > [Asterisk] What about Flowroute for faxing?

reply to IPfaxer

Re: [Asterisk] What about Flowroute for faxing?

nevada is a haven for incorporations, like delaware, many businesses devoted to just being agent of service for out of state incorporators

one of founders says business is in Seattle
one says Nevada
I have no idea

I guess the issue is a few people putting up VOIP service with some hosted or leased servers somewhere gives us no confidence - we only want to work with carriers with significant physical plants and commitment to appropriate staffing - we don't want fly by nights and we don't want shadowy operations that are just cash machines for the owners but when trouble happens it is just blamed on some other company in the VOIP chain - you don't see CallCentric blaming other companies - they take responsibility -

its too easy for anyone to start offering VOIP service and have the service actually be handled by someone else and for the service to be subpar - for casual users who think VOIP is just fun, that's great, but not when you really need telco reliability and you are deploying boatloads of Cisco gear and supporting many users at once and need to be able to trust the carrier

Well of course, that's why my main provider for business and home is CallCentric.

reply to PX Eliezer
I mean look at the HQ address filed with the FCC (which itself is not really evidence of anything other than a filing) - its just the company they used to incorporate, their registered agent in Nevada (just because that is a requirement) named Mail Link LLC
848 N RAINBOW BLVD, Las Vegas - not a real office for Flowroute - just meets minimal incorporation requirements for a business to be incorporated in Nevada which has attractive tax advantages

that gives no confidence at all to us

reply to PX Eliezer
sorry did not mean to be critical of you, you did that research and that was good on your part

we have seen that info before and have tried to work with them before also a couple years ago and it just seemed to be not what we wanted in terms of scale and trust etc. - its not just for us, its for our customers so that is why we care so much

reply to PX Eliezer
yes Callcentric has been really good, glad we agree on that and probably lots more too!

reply to IPfaxer
Oh, I never thought for a second that you were being critical of me.

Thanks.

for what its worth...
»nvsos.gov/SOSEntitySearch/RACorp···LINK+LLC

reply to IPfaxer

I don't disagree with you - there are plenty of more fly-by-night operators that are far worse for sure!

Yes, we have heard they can be reliable but that with trouble tickets sometimes things never get resolved or get blamed on other 3rd parties and that they are more or less a virtual entity

Notice that their contact page on their website lists their service agent address which would only delay the time it takes to send them a letter, they should use their real office address for that - but that's just it - do they have a real office? Or just some people who work from their own homes? Absolutely nothing wrong with that but makes us not want to trust telco traffic to an operation that is only virtual in that way. It means a lot of cooks in the kitchen and one slip up and everybody is pointing fingers.

At least their website has correct year 2012 at bottom and since beginning, they have had a good looking website in my opinion and it has not changed much. Compare that to some others and it boggles my mind that some others even have any customers at all!

Great points and thanks for sharing your good experience with Flowroute - people should try them and see if it works for their needs

reply to w1ve
Well, I wouldn't exactly call it "hell-bent". I did use Vitelity's vFax for a while. It worked most of the time, but I did not care for their "applet" to send faxes. It also left you guessing - did my fax go through? I had a few fail, and there was never any indication unless I logged into the portal to check. Often after getting the phone call "I thought you were going to fax that yesterday...".

I like being able to fax from "in program". With the Incredible FAX 2.0, I can do that. I haven't found any thing else where the fax "behaves" like a network printer.

I'm still trying to find out, definitively, if T.38 will even integrate properly with Asterisk and Hylafax. There's a lot of conflicting information out there concerning Asterisk 1.8 and T.38.
--
If someone refers to herself / himself as a "guru", they probably aren't.

reply to IPfaxer

reply to IPfaxer

reply to envisean
thank you!!
now, as I've said before, principals and staff from carriers should probably not post here and get into back and forths on this public bulletin board as some of them do
your post, however, was not so much a back and forth but more of an introduction so thank you

suffice it to say that I have legal training and have incorporated many businesses over the years, and simply because you chose Nevada or Delaware etc. is not the issue, it is more that you had your agent of service address listed as your corporate HQ on your website - glad you will now be changing that - it brings trust if you are not afraid to disclose your HQ address

I have no qualms about virtual companies or telecommuting. One of my favorites companies is 37signals who has staff spread all around but then did hunker down and have a HQ as well in Chicago which has given them more trust. They also started their SAAS with hosted servers and ultimately moved to their own gear co-located in Chicago to allow better service to their customers.

You are providing telco service. People will rely on it for not only personal calls but also for business and even for emergencies at times. Aside from what you need to do as a vendor as a bare minimum legally, can you talk a bit more about your infrastructure. No secrets - just how you have it arranged at the moment. Do you host servers? Do you co-locate? Do you use a big data center or more than one? Who runs the datacenter? Are you using proprietary software to manage aspects of the service or billing? Which aspects? Do you rely on one or more companies to provide you with DID termination for your customers? Who is that? You only accept Amazon payments and not credit cards directly and not paypal. Please discuss briefly. Also, what do you have in terms of service backup and staff backup? What if you and your partner in the business are injured? Are others capable of continuing the service at a high level of skill?

Please share or better yet, share on your website and provide a link here - you should not have to be posting here if you don't want to.

reply to PX Eliezer

said by PX Eliezer:

said by envisean:

If you have any other questions about our company, feel free to ping me on linkedIn/email/phone/etc.

Thanks for the info!

Now, I know who you are, but many folks don't, so you might want to specify that....

wait a minute - that is me!
just kidding

do you have info on the tech side of flowroute?

reply to IPfaxer

thanks for detailed reply

in terms of some of the other carriers and vendors you use, are there any of those that you use most often?

(when I asked about hosting and co-locating, I meant to ask if you used hosted equipment or if you co-located your own gear - to clarify, you do co-locate your own gear in the all the datacenters you use or just a portion of the 3 data centers ?)

kudos on your website from the beginning, but it is getting a little long in the teeth, keep up the good work and spread your message far and wide