First a big thanks to Dennis / Bobby and the OOMA team for working with me. This does feel a bit like beta testing, but they never lost their patience with me or my multiple posts or phone calls and my system is working VERY well, exactly as promised.
Faxes were not only NOT promised, but almost promised that they would not work. After re-setting my system the way I wanted it, I just can't use it for faxing. I am getting only 10% reliability. I have read and read about the protocols and problems using VOIP for faxing and I don't know what OOMA has in mind for this. I have canceled my landline anyway. These days, I rarely need to fax to or from my home and I just don't feel like paying them $20 a month to have a plain voice line.
Some notes (and I appreciate OOMA allowing me to voice these here about other businesses).
Vonage seems to have worked tihs problem out. I have friends who pay $30 a month or so for both a voice and fax line. There's is reliable from what they tell me. And yes, they pay $360 per year for the privilege and even with OLD OOMA pricing, OOMA has that beat... but the question is HOW do that do that and can OOMA use the same protocols?
Second, just on a lark, I tried a MAGICJACK. I bought one of these things for travel. It doesn't compare in features to OOMA and I would never want it as my home phone system. But I travel and don't have an unlimited cell minute plan (not to mention reception problems in some hotels), but most hotels have broadband. For $20 a year, I will keep it in a drawer and take in on the few trips I make a year. So I plugged my fax into that and it worked, first time. I will test it and see what the reliability is, but this is a good back up plan until OOMA and VOIP in general can handle faxes.