Send Fax Online

Sending a fax over the Internet is somewhat different than sending a fax over a phone line. A phone network transfers data into some form of sound waves that can be modulated and whose frequency can be changed. This wave of sound is transmitted over the phone network to the destination hardware which is then put back together in its original form.

A digital network, on the other hand, handles data in a binary format, representing data as a series of 1s and 0s. This stream of binary data is sent over a digital or analog network and reconstructed by the destination machine. Sending data as a string of 1s and 0s is much cheaper than sending sound wave data. It is also much faster. As such, time on the network and network saturation is much less than that of an analog-only network. Companies are able to provide very large discounts for faxing via a digital medium as compared to faxing over a phone network.

All the more useful, some companies even provide free, limited services for people unable to afford, or unwilling to purchase, a subscription to their service. Such companies garner enough revenue off of subscriptions from paying customers to provide such features. Of course, this is also used as a marketing and advertising method to entice users into utilizing their services in hopes that they will upgrade to a subscription in the future.

The ease with which users can fax over the Internet is also much greater than faxing over a phone network. Assume you have a document stored on your computer that you would like to fax to someone; you could easily open a web browser and log in to your fax service account, upload the document, and the rest is taken care of. The data is simply transmitted across the network to the recipient's inbox. You would never have to print out that same document and feed it sheet by sheet through a fax machine.