Using the Internet to send faxes in order to eliminate phone lines, long distance charges and stand-alone fax equipment. Also called "virtual faxing" and "cloud faxing," such services route email messages with attachments to actual fax machines via telephone number. They also receive faxes dialed to a fax number, convert them to email attachments and send them to the recipient's email address. The paid services are based on the number of pages per month, and free services may be extremely limited and also include ads on the cover sheet.
Fax/Scan to Email
Internet faxing has become so popular that fax machines, scanners and multifunction printers often include a "fax to email" or "scan to email" function. With a dedicated Internet connection or via the network, such machines convert scanned paper pages into PDF files or some other popular format to be attached to email. See
fax,
fax gateway,
T.37 and
T.38.