Why the Fax Machine Refuses To Die

snydeq writes "Deep End's Paul Venezia waxes befuddled on the ongoing existence of the fax machine. 'Consider what a fax machine actually is: a little device with a sheet feeder, a terrible scanning element, and an ancient modem. Most faxes run at 14,400bps. That's just over 1KB per second — and people are still using faxes to send 52 poorly scanned pages of some contract to one another. Over analog phone lines. Sometimes while paying long-distance charges! The mind boggles,' Venezia writes. 'If something as appallingly stupid as the fax machine can live on, it makes you wonder how we make progress at all. Old habits die hard. It just goes to show you: Bad technology generally isn't the problem; it's the people who persist in using that technology rather than embracing far superior alternatives.'"

Comments

It's convenience and security.

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

Sheet-fed scanners are ridiculously expensive, plus you have to save the file, attach it to an email, then, hopefully, the file isn't too large for the sender or recipient's mailserver. With the fax machine, one just drops the stack in, verify the fax successfully transmitted, task complete.

Also, many people feel that snooping of phone lines is much less likely to occur than snooping of email, when is sent in the clear.

Re:It's convenience and security.

[CalSolt]

Exactly. Email is NOT secure. You don't know how many servers your email passes through or what they do with it, and you can't guarantee the receiver is protecting the information. Encrypted email is far harder to implement in your network of contacts than a fax machine. Even then, if public key vendors can be hacked/spoofed/compromised, then how can you say encrypted email on a private small business server won't be? Doctors pretty much are obligated to use fax or they will almost certainly end up violating HIPAA.

The IT industry has not been able to provide a superior or even equal solution to fax yet.

Re:It's convenience and security.

[Bacon Bits]

Most FAX machine inboxes nowadays go to email, in my experience. The vast majority of FAX systems today larger than a single office are paperless systems built into leased copiers or multi-function devices which do the raw data transfer and call handling but otherwise input from a printer on a computer OS (or the built-in scanner) and output to the local email server.

Quite honestly, the reason the FAX refuses to die is because people, once they adopt a method, tend not to change. It's the inertia of least effort, aka laziness, aka efficiency of thought. Granted, there are good reasons for this approach. Most people have bad experiences with moving to new systems. How many times have you spoken with someone who blames a new system for slowing productivity, missing features, or for making the effort of using those features far more complex? People therefore tend to distrust new technology, again because in their experience -- and this is correct -- new technology fails and established technology works. The reason for that truth is quite simple: only good technology sticks around to become established; bad technology is abandoned.

Why should someone abandon what works for what doesn't? Or, more accurately, abandon that which fails in a way I have already learned to handle in exchange for something which fails in a way I don't understand -- and maybe can't even tell if it has failed? If I'm going to invest extra effort in something which is not more reliable and does not

So, what does email offer that FAX does not? Is it more reliable? No, not really. Email has inherently unreliable delivery, particularly with spam and malware filters which silently delete suspect emails. Additionally, email is already a primary contact for business, so FAX availability actually offers some communication redundancy. Is email more secure? Absolutely not. Email is unencrypted during transmission unless the message itself is encrypted. Does email guarantee sender identity better than FAX? Quite the opposite. It's often illegal to obfuscate or alter your sending FAX number due to junk FAX laws, while spoofing email is trivial.

Finally, since FAX is established in the business world, it has become something you will often need not because you yourself haven't adopted a better technology, but because your business peers and customers haven't adopted a better technology. Even where it's not wanted, it's a mandatory legacy system to deal with people who MUST use FAX for whatever reason.

So, if everybody has it and email actually isn't better, why change?

It's for signatures

[grimsnaggle]

People seem to think that because a fax machine scans physical documents that it represents an authentic signature on a document. Solid reasoning? Not a chance, but when has that stopped anyone from reaching stupid conclusions?

Re:It's for signatures

[xs650]

That's nothing, some people think a fax machine sends the paper through the phone line when we all know it only sends the ink through the phone line.

Re:It's for signatures

[Anonymous Coward]

Judges think that. Not because they want to, but because it has been accepted by the courts. It takes years to get a new technology accepted for the purpose, it's expensive, complicated, and very difficult. New technology can still be used even if it hasn't got blanket acceptance, you will just need to pay hundreds of dollars (possibly several thousand) to have an expert testify to how the technology works.

Since the fax machine does the job for legal purposes, even if it sucks somewhat, it doesn't suck enough to warrant the effort of getting a court to accept the new technology. That and the new technology (even though faxes have these problems, they can be ignored--remember, they are accepted already) easily has security holes unless you get pretty specialized (as far as lawyers are concerned). That means it isn't one size fits all. That means it's dead before it gets off the ground.

Do you know how difficult it was (and may still be) just to get a court to accept a digital picture? Because they can be "faked" (not that "regular" photos can't be, especially since the printing process can often be digital anyways). Even REALLY low standard courts like traffic court, I've seen them reject digital photo evidence. Getting a court like that to accept, say, a GPG key? Not a chance.

Hell, this even works to the government's detriment. For YEARS in Ontario you could fight a LIDAR (laser radar) speeding ticket because the technology wasn't accepted by the courts (it is now) and that meant the prosecution would need to hire, at several hundred, possibly thousand, dollars an expert from the company to prove the LIDAR gun was better than a chair at measuring speed. All that for a $150 speeding ticket? Not likely. Red light tickets got thrown out for years because they didn't meet evidence standards. Why? The date and time of the offence was not integrated into the photo itself, instead it was provided separately (possibly below the picture or on the back of it, or actually separately) and an officer would sign off that it is true. Not enough to pass court standards.

So, hell no, fax machines, as crap as they are, they are plenty enough at this point. Find me a computer technology that is still 100% backwards compatible for 30 years that provides even the slightest amount of usefulness like a fax and we might be talking.

Re:It's for signatures

[scottbomb]

Your "stupid conclusion" seems to hold up just fine for the legal beagles in just about every company I've ever worked for. My current (and all previous) employer still uses fax machines for this very reason (although they have progressed to copy machines for sending and e-fax for receiving). My company processes hundreds, if not a few thousand, of them every week.

Check with any pharmacy or doctor. They all still use fax too. For the same reasons.

The first post on this thread (an actual first post that means something... I guess the kids are asleep) has a good point as well. When dealing with that much data, the cost per kB is a lot less over an old-fashioned phone line at 14k than a 5-10 GB image that's a PITA to create, send, and receive.

It's a scanner people can use

[SuperKendall]

The thing about a fax is, that anyone can use it properly in its default configuration.

Scanning for most people is fraught with troubles, from too large files they cannot email, to losing files saved who knows where, to simple connection problems between scanner and computer. Meanwhile the fax still just works, unless you are lucky enough to work at a place that has rigged up a well-run scanning infrastructure for you.

Re:It's a scanner people can use

[sjames]

Don't be so sure. Even when the other person insists they must send the document as a fax, don't be surprised if it takes 4 or 5 rounds as they send you a cover sheet with no fax, 5 blank pages (must be set too light), 5 black pages (oops, set it too dark), 5 blank pages again (wrong side up in the fax all along), half of the document (ops, jammed), and several other imaginative fails. Finally, they send you one where the pages went in crooked but since you can guess at the missing bits you just tell them it came through fine so you can be done with it.

Bullshit

[BenBoy]

Fax machine. Plug it in. It just works. Something computers still just dream of.

Simplicity wins.

[redemtionboy]

I actually work for a certain fortune 500 company that produces laser printers, and while we are phasing a lot of our fax focus out, there just isn't the faith in email that there is in fax. With a fax, you have a physical copy ending up in an office that you know someone has received. There's no spam filter to worry about and you know that that fax is going to get to the right person a lot more than than email if you don't have that person's direct email. For something you have a physical copy of, fax is just a lot simpler. Until there are more printers out there that have email addresses built into them, we're going to be a ways off from replacing fax.

Send/recieve well over 100 per day

[Anonymous Coward]

Pharmacist here. They are still in heavy use between us and the md offices, for a few reasons. E-Rx ins't always 2-way, so a refill request often has to be faxed. Many times we need to contact the MD office and they can't take a call. A fax gives them all the info, in a simple readable format to take care of later. Sometimes a hospital needs a patient profile for the last 6 months and it would take 30mins to explain it all over the phone, so it gets faxed.

Emailing HIPPA documents in not an option and I wouldn't use it even it was.

Pointless gripe

[bigsexyjoe]

That's a great article on why the fax machine refuses to die. Oh wait, there's no explanation. It's just some guy complaining. When I read an article which is just some douchbag complaining, ten times out of ten it was linked by slashdot. Maybe "Why won't the fax machine die!" can be the opposite of "Get off my lawn!"

Want a big reason?

[cplusplus]

All fax machines are required to implement delivery confirmation and time stamps, and log a certain number of incoming and outgoing faxes. There is a rigid standard behind the faxing specs, and fax records can be (and have been) used in a court of law. It's hard to find another *cheap* and *widely adopted* digital sending standard that has the same legal robustness, with a proven track record. That alone is why fax technology will be slow to die.

Re:Want a big reason?

[pstorry]

As others have said, they offer this as an option, but nothing more.

The clock can be set incorrectly, the sending number set incorrectly, and all sorts. (These we call a TSI - Transmitted Subscriber Identification.)

I'm managing a fax system that handles around 100,000 faxes a week (I work for a large financial insitution). If the sender's number in the TSI was even remotely useable, we'd be able to route faxes on it - but is just isn't. Something like 50% of all faxes we receive - often from large household financial names that should know better - have a junk TSI.
That's 50% of volume, by the way. When we break it down to senders, it's well over 75% incorrect.

So whilst in theory we could route faxes via TSI, in practice we route faxes via the inbound number that the sender dialled. Nothing else is reliable or usable for routing faxes to their destination mailbox/application/printer.

A FAX has a legal advantage

[drnb]

A FAX has a legal advantage. A third party, the phone company, can verify the sender, receiver and date/time. There is also a bunch of case law regarding when a FAX can be or must be accepted as a valid legal document.

Fax " The original PUSH technology"

[ElitistWhiner]

You don't appreciate technology until you understand the function it serves and problem solved. Fax orginated as battlefield deployment solution to get maps and text into the right hands.

Today, nothing has changed. It is the weapon of choice to enlist support, disseminate and communicate on the battlefields. Only the location has changed. And the win-win with FAX is its ability to run unattended, bombproof reliability and that receipt verification is the gold standard guarantee of undeniable success in the chain of communication.

Speed has nothing to do with the fact that its importance is Fax's ability to deliver guaranteed. The physical paper output assuredly enforces every fax must be ' handled' at the receiving end irregardless how much timeshift it pushes itself onto the receiver.

That is one critical factor no amount of email, voicemail nor text message can compete against.