Editor’s Corner:
BACK FROM THE IFAX FRONTIER

I spent the better part of last week in San Diego with more than 200 others in the fax industry at "Fax Directions ‘97." The enthusiasm and fire is there for faxing over the Internet and many new products lead the way.

As of this moment, you cannot readily fax from point to point via the Internet as you can using regular telecom lines. But steps are being taken to move in that direction.

Cisco Systems is in a good position to make point-to-point Internet faxing a reality. Since the company’s networking products are incorporated into 80 percent of the world’s networks, Cisco sees itself as an influential player in reconfiguring these networks to carry fax over the Internet. By distributing software solutions to all the end points in its clients’ networks, Cisco could very well be the catalyst and supplier of the changes we all need to enable cost-free faxing around the globe.

Meanwhile others use a different approach to Internet faxing. Some use e-mail protocols and special browser software that both the sender and the receiver must have to review faxes. Color fax is now possible using software from Compressent and a local color printer.

Fax manufacturers have also taken on the challenge of sending faxes to e-mail addresses. The Murata F120 is about to announce this feature and the Panasonic 770 already has it in place.

Behind all of these technological advances is the push toward unified messaging. JFax introduced e-mail boxes that could accept voice mail and faxes. The question is how many people will really use them? The hope is that as voice applications travel over the Net, it will drive more people to a unified mailbox. As road warriors become more entrenched in their lifestyle, one-stop message checking will be more in demand and become more attractive. Even those who send messages will become aware of the integration.

Fax industry professionals were charged up to roll out new products with a gusto I hadn’t seen for a few years. Many repeated to each other, "Who says fax is dead?" I went away from this conference with a vision of fax as a "rich text" electronic document that shows up in paper and paperless forms traveling over phone lines, networks, intranets and the Internet. No, fax is not dead. It is everywhere, including online.