The Arcane Machine
If you set out to build a fax machine, you would combine a really poor quality scanner with an obsolete analog modem. You would build it to accommodate only monochrome images and you’d have it print those images out with such poor resolution as to render them unreadable by humans. The fax machine has been with us forever, it seems like, yet it has never been significantly improved. The modem technology used in fax machines is ancient by communications technology standards. While modems were a staple many years ago, the world has moved on to the Internet for data communications. Except for the venerable fax machine.
The VoIP Dilemma
Unfortunately (or actually, fortunately!), the telecommunications infrastructure has moved on as well, but the fax machine still expects things to be as they were 20 years ago. Since the 1990s, an increasing percentage of the world’s telecom circuits utilize Voice-over-IP (VoIP). It is virtually impossible to place a voice call today where some portion of the call does not pass over a VoIP connection. Why is this a problem? Because VoIP does not pass modem traffic reliably. A modem converts data pulses (ones and zeros), into audio tones and sends them over a voice-grade analog circuit. While this was never a 100% reliable approach, it worked much better when a voice-grade circuit consisted of a dedicated pair of copper wires switched end-to-end by the telephone company. Those days are long gone, and the reliability of fax has suffered more and more as time goes on. Since fax does not incorporate a universal acknowledgement mechanism, there is often no way of knowing if your fax was received, other than to call the party and ask them if they got it.
And here’s the punch line: It’s never going to get better. VoIP is here to stay (at least until the next revolutionary technology comes along). And VoIP is optimized for voice transmission. It uses compression techniques that just destroy analog modem signals. And, despite efforts to create standards such as T.38 to make fax reliable over VoIP, the performance of fax will continue to decline as VoIP becomes more and more pervasive throughout the carrier network. So, can you get fax to work? Absolutely. Sometimes. Can you get it to work reliably, all of the time? No. I wouldn’t bet my business on it.
Businesses cling to fax because everyone uses it, the machines are cheap and, more than anything, I think, just out of habit. When everyone you deal with is still using fax, it’s difficult to kick the habit. But let’s take a look at some of the alternatives you can use to begin to wean your business off of the fax habit.
PDF and email
Documents you send to vendors, customers and employees can very often be sent in an email. The standard today is to convert your document to pdf (Portable Document Format) format and attach it to your email. There are lots of excellent programs to convert your documents to pdf format, many of them free. I particularly like this one. The programs can act as a print driver on your PC, so any document you could print can be reliably converted to pdf format. There are a couple of exceptions where this approach does not work. First, where the document does not exist in electronic form. Second, where you need to send a copy of a document with a signature or other handwritten annotations.
Scanning the Horizon
If all you have is a printed copy to work with, you can scan the document and, again, send it as an attachment to an email. Many of today’s photocopiers also allow you to scan documents. Scanning even multi-page documents and saving them to a network directory is quick and easy with these devices. Stand-alone scanning machines are also readily available and inexpensive, even the ones with sheet feeders for scanning multi-page documents. The time required to scan and email a document is about the same as the time to fax it. For multi-page documents, scanning will typically be quicker.
The Fax Server
Even if you decide you cannot live without your fax machines for sending faxes, you can move to a fax server to receive incoming faxes and push them to the recipients email inbox. The recipient can then decide if they need the document printed out or if they can just file it electronically. Many offices are moving to reduce paper documents and the fax server can be a tremendous help in this area.
IP Fax Services
The other option is to use an IP Fax Service. Companies like Momentum Telecom and AccessLine provide IP fax services which allow your employees to send faxes to and receive faxes from legacy analog fax machines without needing to have a physical machine in your office. These services are very affordable, and can often pay for themselves just by eliminating the phone lines for fax machines.
Kick the Habit!
Kicking the fax habit can take some planning, some investment and some change in habits, but it is worth the effort to move away from this dying technology.
Does your business still rely heavily on fax? What drives your need for fax? What have you done to reduce its negative impact on your business? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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