57 Varieties of Internet Faxing

Tania Hershman

The total expenditure by Fortune 500 companies on international faxing is around $15 million per year, which accounts for 41 percent of those companies' telephone bills, according to a 1996 Gallup/Pitney Bowes survey. Meanwhile, options for routing international faxes over the Internet rather than via more expensive phone lines continue to increase.

The Logiphone Group (Ra'ananna, Israel, +972 9 914360) has won the race to announce the first global Internet fax service that doesn't require users to have an Internet connection. Using PassaFax hardware developed by RadLinx (Tel Aviv, Israel, http://www.radlinx.rad.co.il ), Log iphone is establishing a worldwide network that will eventually encompass 40 countries. PassaFax clients will pay $35 a month, plus local phone charges to connect to the Logiphone access number, to send international faxes.

Subscribers attach a PassaFax auto-dialer to their fax machine or computer and send faxes as usual. Local faxes are transmitted over regular telephone lines, but long-distance and international faxes are automatically routed to a local Internet service provider (ISP).

From there, PassaFax hardware sends the message over the Internet to the PassaFax-equipped remote ISP in the destination city, where the data is converted back to a fax. The destination number is encapsulated in the header of the IP transmission. During the IP handshake between the two PassaFaxes, the destination number is transferred and analyzed to remove international dialing codes and turn the transmission into a local call. The f ax is then forwarded over regular phone lines, for which the user is also billed.

Logiphone's rivals are allying with ISPs in many countries so they can offer Internet faxing to subscribers. I-Fax, launched in May by Arel (Yavne, Israel, http://www.arel.co.il ), and IP/FaxRouter, from Brooktrout Technology (Needham, MA, http://www.brooktrout.com/ ), launched in June, both operate in a way similar to RadLinx's PassaFax's. I-Fax and IP/FaxRouter combine routing hardware with management software that monitors usage and -- for ISPs -- generates client-billing invoices. Arel has signed an agreement with EUNet, one of the l argest pan-European ISPs, and has installations in the U.S. and the U.K. Brooktrout is initially focusing on intracompany faxing.

For those who don't want -- or need -- to use a fax machine, several companies offer Windows-based software solutions to cut your phone bills. FaxStorm Desktop, from NetCentric (Cambridge, MA, http://www.netcentric.com/ ), and Internet Fax Exchange, from NetXchange Communications (Migdal Ha'Emeq, Israel, http://www.ntxc.com ), were both launched in 1996. In October, Open Port (Chicago, IL, http://www.openport.com ) announced Harmony ISP. All three products, which remain transparent to the user, allow corporations to exploit their Internet connections.

NetCentric's FaxStorm is based on the company's POPware technology, software that runs at the point of presence (POP), where phone line meets Internet connection at the ISP's operations center. From the desktop, FaxStorm compresses, encrypts, and transmits faxes to a POPware server, which routes the fax over the Internet to the POPware server closest to its final destination.

NetCentric has allied with Concentric Network Corp., a U.S.-based ISP covering both the U.S. and Canada that has offered an Internet faxing service since last August.

Similarly, NetXchange has developed a simple fax-transport protocol, called SFTP, that lets a company's network servers manage faxes by acting like switches. The company's Internet Xchange for Fax software de termines the most cost-effective delivery route -- via telephone lines, private LANs, or the Internet.

The newest version, specifically tailored to the ISP, has already been acquired by ISPs and telecommunications firms in several countries. AimQuest, a consortium of worldwide ISPs and telecommunications companies covering the U.S., Europe, and the Far East, is to establish a global fax network for its members using NetXchange's technology.

Open Port's Harmony also incorporates a least-cost routing facility for corporate faxing, and the company offers Harmony ISP to ISPs. At press time, no information was available as to how many ISPs were using Open Port's technology, but a company spokesperson said to expect an announcement this year.

The success of these various solutions will depend in part on their ability to attract a large global network of ISPs so that users aren't limited in the number of destinations they can send faxes to. Choosing from among the various options offered depends on your particular circumstances, either as a business user or a home user. The good news is that a wealth of solutions are emerging to lower your telephone bill.