Who’d have thunk it?! Email hasn’t replaced the fax machine just yet! Blueface experienced the busiest week of faxing ever last week – the electronic fax service was in constant use both day and night. The fax to email / email to fax service is a means of replacing a traditional fax machine and getting rid of another nasty line rental bill. It turns faxing into a more email-like experience for when you really need to use fax. Which for many people is a lot more often than I’d have thought!
The Blueface office fax machine is squirreled away in a cupboard somewhere and is only occasionally dusted down to make tests.
For most companies, email has replaced faxing as the best means of transmitting documents. That’s the view taken 5 years ago when I was very sceptical (to put it mildly!) about introducing a fax to email/email to fax service. However it seemed to be a good solution for people who did want to send faxes, but no longer had a phone line (using Blueface for their phone service and avoiding line rental!). So we introduced it back in 2005 sometime and I’ve been amazed ever since!
I know that many banks and legal institutions use fax extensively – I can’t email my bank for example which seems bizarre in the 21st century but then what’s not bizarre about banking in Ireland?! A whole range of other industries use faxing extensively – from contractors sending back timesheets to doctors sending prescriptions. There’s no sign of demand for faxing abating anytime soon.
The service works by attaching your document to an email, and sending it to the fax number @fax.blueface.ie – just like sending a normal email. However the Blueface fax service receives the message and transmits the attached document to the number specified by you. Similarly, when someone sends a fax to your Blueface fax number, the service takes the fax and sends it to your email address as an attachment.
Back to the numbers – last week we handled just over 23,000 faxes, with a peak throughput of 907 per hour. This has grown by about 25% on the same period last year.
It seems there’s life in that fax machine yet!
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