TMCnews Featured Article

When Xerox introduced the Magnafax Telecopier in 1966, few dreamt that the day would come when machines would no longer be required to send fax messages. With digitization, sending faxes became a breeze, but with the advent of high-capacity email, a new question arose: Could sent fax messages be received as emails? This idea is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Indeed, Miami-based Telx Telecom has announced a new fax to email service, Telx Telecom Fax.

This new improved way to digitize fax messages is much more than a fax machine. No additional equipment, no extra phone lines, and no upkeep is needed, meaning time, energy and money are saved.

It works like this:

Users are first provided with a personal instant fax number that’s routed to their inbox. Telx Telecom explains that clients can either choose between Miami, Fort Lauderdale, or West Palm Beach phone numbers.

When a fax is received, the fax is directly sent to the user’s e-mail account. This can be forwarded anywhere in the world via e-mail or can be saved in PDF format for future reference. The instant it’s sent, the document finds a place in the recipient’s e-mail account.

There was a time when the word “fax” was uttered, the first thing that came to mind was a huge machine that whirred and spouted reams of paper. These machines would make a digital image of any document and send it via telephone lines, meaning if the telephone stopped working, then no fax could be sent or received.

Large companies (especially those in Japan) still have elaborate and widespread networks of fax machines, and in places where high-speed Internet is still sparse, email and video communication has not been able to take off quite as strongly.

Fortunately, we now have the ability to combine the transmitting power of fax machines and the power of the Internet to fully unify the past and the present.