Five Advances in Fax Technology

Fax sometimes gets a bad rap. Okay, more like most times, but that’s because people don’t realize that fax has evolved just like other important technologies such as the wireless telephone. People don’t use shoe-sized wireless phones any longer like Gordon Gekko did in the 1987 movie Wall Street, nor is fax still operating like it did back in the 80’s. Rather, it is leaving the bad music videos and teased hair in the past where it belongs.

Fax has changed in so many significant ways, including using new technology that drastically reduces telecom expenses, automated rule-based document reception, automated role-based document processing workflow, support for mobile devices and fax in the cloud.

For example, simply sending faxes used to cost a fair amount of money. It used to cost $0.56 per outgoing fax and $0.44 for an incoming fax when paper, toner and equipment were factored in, according to a recent Biscom white paper by Peter Davidson. Today, it only costs from $0.05 to $0.20 to send a fax and $0.04 to receive one.

“Enterprises using fax over IP (FoIP) save even more money by using their voice over IP (VoIP) backbones,” wrote Davidson. “Every fax sent over FoIP costs less because PBX (News - Alert) station ports costs twice as much to use as IP router ports.”

Modern fax technology is also capable of receiving not just fax images suitable for printing, but the raw data that can be used for optical character recognition (OCR) and barcode extraction as well. Data transmitted through fax images can be turned into metadata in a matter of seconds, offering up the possibility of automated, rule-based document reception.

Additionally, this can lead to an automated, role-based document processing workflow that was not available in the past.

Faxes received can now progress from role to role based on information specified in data entry fields.  In response to the data entry, the status of the image can be updated and, if the right criteria is met, it can be sent along to those with the right role.

Modern fax technology also supports mobile devices – something most companies can’t even imagine. Innovations with FoIP allow companies to send and receive faxes using their iPhone or Android (News - Alert) mobile phones, allowing for increased user satisfaction as mobility continues to grow in popularity in the coming years. Users can even take pictures of documents from their mobile devices and have them sent via fax straight from their phone.

This is partially because fax now is available through the cloud. In addition to on-premise fax servers, fax now is available today as an on-demand service hosted in the cloud. This can provide scalability, redundancy, load balancing and cost savings, among other benefits such as faxing from mobile phones.

However, all this requires FoIP – an industry-leading technology sought after by many for unparalleled benefits.

One firm among the many who truly rises to the top is FaxSIPit. It is a cloud-based fax service network that transmits faxes using HTTPS combined with TDM technology, a marriage of two extremely reliable forms of delivery that not only bring the latest technology but also added reliability over faxes of yore.

HTTPS is being called the fax industry standard, and with good reason. FaxSIPit lets faxes be easily, quickly and securely delivered not only over the Internet, but also via Wi-Fi, satellite and cellular networks – what many believe is too complex to be possible.

Just as wireless phones have skyrocketed and evolved, so too has the fax. 

To learn more about HTTPS fax and FaxSIPit, visit www.faxsipit.com.

To find out more about FaxSIPit, visit the company at ITEXPO Miami 2013, taking place Jan. 29- Feb 1 in Miami, Florida. Visit FaxSIPit in booth #625. For more information on ITEXPO (News - Alert) Miami 2013, click here.