I don't think I'm alone in dialing a fax number by mistake instead of a voice number. The attempt of the other fax to handshake with my ear is really annoying!
My solution: have a filter on phones that sample the incoming sounds. If it sounds like a fax trying to handshake to my phone, then I get a canned message from my phone saying, "you've dialed a fax again. Press One to operate in data mode." If it doesn't sound like a fax on the other end, then the phone can just replay the sampled piece of the other party saying "hello."
The whole thing could be disabled in the phone's software of course, if I always used the phone to initiate a dial-up session or other data-related task. I should be easy to differentiate between a fax and the tones that appear before "out of service" type operator announcements.
Seems to me to be the undeployed "car bumper" of making a phone call. It could be implemented model by model as a competitive differentiator, but I think after a while all cell phones and most landlines would want the feature, and it'd certainly be cheap to implement.
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For an implementation, how about frequency and volume analysis of the signal? If its too loud, turn it down. If the active frequency range doesn't stay put, then it's probably not a voice on the other end of the phone.
I like this one. And it should be possible to implement not just on a device basis but possibly on a aystem basis as well. If you register your house as fax free, then the system will block all fax noise when you call, or possibly prevent you from dialing a fax machine in the first place.