Good Day diecipher-ga,
The companies that offer the service of sending faxes from the
internet via IP address still need to have a physical phone line
tapped somewhere into the system. An internet packet has no means of
communicating with a fax number.
What the companies do is receive your information through their IP,
save the document, and than transfer it to a system with a phone line
which physically dials out to the number you asked for. If the company
is large and they have multiple locations all over the world, they
will transfer the fax via e-mail to the closest outlet they have
available to where you are faxing, and make the call from there to
save money.
If for example you want to send a fax to Paris, France, your service
provider might e-mail the fax to Bonn, Germany if that is the closest
location they own to your fax's destination. From there making a long
distance call to Paris will be a lot cheaper than faxing it from i.e.:
North America directly.
Back to the idea of setting up your own service:
Setting up your own system would defeat the purpose of the service,
which is intended for those who do not wish to purchase their own
faxing equipment. Think of the service as of going to a local print
shop, handing over a page, and asking to have it faxed to a number.
The store than uses their fax equipment to send the fax. With the
internet, instead of having to walk over to a store with a hard copy,
you transmit it electronically, and someone else uses their own
equipment to make the fax call.
To find out more about how faxing works over the internet, see:
URL: http://www.macworld.com/1997/03/news/3325.html
Web Site: Macword: Faxing Over the Internet
If you wish to do things on your own, I would suggest getting an old
modem with faxing capabilities. You don't need to go and buy a new
modem. An old 14.4 modem will do. You can probably find one free if
you ask around.
With the modem all you need is a piece of software like WinFax. Since
WinFax is pretty expensive, I recommend using FREE CallCenter. It can
be found at:
http://www.v3inc.com/freecc.htm
Once you install the software, any application that you use can send a
fax, as long as the application has a print option. With the software
installed, when you hit print, you will see a new printer available
for selection in the print dialog that comes up. When you select the
Call Center a new box will open up asking for the fax number you wish
to send to. From there the software will walk you through sending a
fax.
Unfortunately this will not avoid the long distance charges since you
are dialing the number manually. There is hardware out there which
will let you cut back on long distance through the use of their own
networks, but this hardware is pretty expensive. If money is no
object, I can elaborate on this at request. This method uses a network
as described above, where the hardware you purchase is on a network
that will allow you to transfer your fax electronically over the
internet as far as possible. Once the end of the network closest to
your final destination has been reached, the number is dialed from
that location saving on long distance calls.
I hope this helps you out in trying to find the best possible solution
for you. If you would like more information, please tell me what kind
of faxing you would like to do (local or long distance) and how much
money you wish to invest in this project. Just ask for a
clarification, and I will be sure to get back to you within a few
hours.
If you are just looking at local calls, I would definitely recommend
using an older modem with faxing software. A new modem is pretty cheap
too, but I see no advantage in purchasing a new modem to do a task
that has been done for a long long time. :)
Thank you for your question.
Regards,
slawek-ga |
