Maybe faxing will disappear! FINALLY

[Rusty.Harris]

Now if we can just get the FCC to abandon fax!

Goodbye fax machines: Ofcom drops obligation for providers - Neowin

[blackcat4866]

I think the state and local governments are the last holdouts, and they have the delusion that somehow it's more secure than an email attachment.

Personally I will be glad to see them go, with all the VOIP issues. It's seems like they could have made design changes to better accommodate VOIP lines 10 years ago.

[slimslob]

Now if we can just get the FCC to abandon fax!

Goodbye fax machines: Ofcom drops obligation for providers - Neowin

FYI he Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunication and postal industries of the United Kingdom.
Not applicable in the US.

[davidmtupper]

I think the state and local governments are the last holdouts, and they have the delusion that somehow it's more secure than an email attachment.

Personally I will be glad to see them go, with all the VOIP issues. It's seems like they could have made design changes to better accommodate VOIP lines 10 years ago.

Nope, it's required by law for some medical and legal applications. Those laws need to be reviewed and revised to catch up with technology.

[driving lots of miles]

Nope, it's required by law for some medical and legal applications. Those laws need to be reviewed and revised to catch up with technology.

My daughter works in a large medical office and it is easier to have all faxes to come to one point and printed for everyone to have access. She says that an E-mail account with everyone having access, is to easy to have something deleted accidently with no paper trail.

[slimslob]

Nope, it's required by law for some medical and legal applications. Those laws need to be reviewed and revised to catch up with technology.

It was originally required because they felt that a signature on a faxed document could nit be altered. That was back in the days of analog Group 1, G1, fax that took 4 or 6 minutes to send an a LT size document such as a Quip 1200. They had an audio coupler box that you set a telephone handset down in. They were later replaced by Group 2, G2, at 2 or 3 minutes. Transmission speed was based on scan rate so with the faster speed you also got lower image quality. Even at the slower speed you could still see the scan lines breaks.

That all went out the window with digital Groups 3&4. Most medical now use email for sending prescriptions and transferring patient information between offices. As for the legal field I have had customers who were bankruptcy lawyers and they have had to send client documents to the Bankruptcy courts be secure email, direct connection to the regional courts office, at 300 dpi.

[KenB]

Definitely NOT going away in the US of A anytime soon.

Those vertical markets are far too dependent on it.

Internet faxing is rapidly taking over PSTN though, the future of fax will definitely morph somewhat.

[slimslob]

My daughter works in a large medical office and it is easier to have all faxes to come to one point and printed for everyone to have access. She says that an E-mail account with everyone having access, is to easy to have something deleted accidently with no paper trail.

Why not just setup an email group which will automatically distribute it to every email address that is a member of the group. I have seen far too many paper jams when receiving faxes where the fax is lost. With email there is always an electronic trail of all the email servers involved. In the US email providers are required by law to retain backups of every email that passes through their servers for at least 3 years, it may be as much as 10 years.

[KenB]

I have to send glucose readings to my doctor periodically.

Even though he is part of a major hospital, there is no way for me to directly submit them electronically; they must be faxed or snail-mailed.

Fortunately, I can submit them to a website for the hospital, but then I still need to fax them out of that site to his office.

While it’s easy to do, it’s still a time consuming pain in the a…I mean neck.

[KenB]

My daughter works in a large medical office and it is easier to have all faxes to come to one point and printed for everyone to have access. She says that an E-mail account with everyone having access, is to easy to have something deleted accidently with no paper trail.

That would fall squarely on the shoulders of the IT department.

There is NO reason that they can’t set up a mailbox to be shared where no one user could possibly delete the message for all.