The End of the Fax Machine

"Can you send me a fax", "Fax that over", "scan and fax those documents" were common phrases used in the business place across the world and the NHS alone ran over 11,620 fax machines in the late 1990's. Fax technology dates back to 1846 through inventor Alexander Bain with his chemical mechanical fax devices. In 1843 his "Electric Printing Telegraph" was evolved by Federick Bakewell and demonstrated a telefax machine the first commercial telefax service between Paris and Lyon was displayed in 1865, over 11 years before the invention of the telephone.

Some businesses maintain a kind of fax hardware capability, the technology has faced increasing competition from web-based alternatives such as Fax to Email solutions. In many countries, the use of electronic signatures on agreements and contracts are not recognised as legal authorisation, while faxed contracts with copies of signatures are.

Fax is used in high volumes across Japan for cultural and graphemic reasons as they are able to send to recipients from over 81% of convenience shops nationwide. Fax machines commonly print the re-sized content of the sent fax in an electronic confirmation slip, an A4 size piece of paper is commonly scanned and sent using the fax technology.

In a survey of healthcare technology across Canada in 2018, the report highlighted that two-thirds of surgeries use fax machines as their main route of communicating with other doctors. The fax is seen as safer and more secure than electronic systems which can communicate with each other and pass sensitive information to the wrong hands.

In many workplaces the freestanding fax machine has been replaced by Fax to Email or Fax Servers using cloud-based systems that are capable of receiving and storing incoming faxes in a digital format. These faxes are then routed to the required recipient on paper or via an internal email. Cloud-based fax solutions save maintenance costs, paper and ink costs and monthly rental fees. Fax to Email also reduces costs by preventing unnecessary printouts and removing the need for an analogue phone line.

If your business is using fax to either send or receive documents, call our team on 0800 043 0800 to learn more about Fax to Email and the benefits of moving your fax number to Telecoms World and switching the hardware for software to handle documents in the future.

‍