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Fax to Email
IntroductionWe provide an incoming fax-to-email service as an option to be used with other Internet services from Demon. This document contains information and answers to frequently asked questions that you should read if you intend to use the service, as it will help you make the most out of it. What is Fax to Email?What it DoesThe Fax to Email service allows you to have your own fax number to which others can send faxes. You then receive this fax like a normal email message. Why You Should Use ItWith faxes being delivered directly to your email box, you have no need for a separate fax machine, second phone line or any of the other things necessary to be able to receive faxes in the traditional way. How Much It Costs To UseThe service is free for you to use, but people who send you faxes will be charged for calls at 0870 rates. These may differ depending on their telephone service provider or international operator where calls to +44 870 numbers are supported. The Fax to email service is a free upgrade to the following Demon products :
Certain other Demon products may trial the upgrade free for a year and then keep it for a one off fee of £23.48 (including VAT). Demon Home Broadband cannot have this service added; customers need to upgrade to Demon HomeOffice Broadband. Save MoneyWithout the need for a separate, 24 hour ready fax machine and telephone line, there is potential for savings immediately. You can save money by not having to keep this virtual fax machine stocked up with paper and ink. Sending FaxesCurrently, this service is designed for incoming faxes only. There is a fairly complementary email to fax service, hosted by Demon in the UK and the Netherlands, that delivers faxes on a non-guaranteed basis. More at http://www.tpc.int/. This service has restrictions on it regarding the volume and destinations that can be contacted. We are looking at future services to provide outgoing fax capabilities. Does That Mean I Still Need A Fax Machine to Send Faxes?No. More than likely, if you are a home user, the computer that you use to access the Internet will have a fax capable modem. With the right software (which almost always comes with the modem or computer) you will be able to send documents directly to remote fax machines. If you use the Demon Fax to Email service, you no longer need to maintain a running fax machine or PC with fax modem 24 hours a day, you no longer need to have a second phone line or line splitter and you do not need to be in a single place to pick up your incoming faxes. How Do I Set It Up?Do I Need A Dial-Up Account With Demon?The Fax to Email service is an add-on to a Demon Internet service. You must have an existing, active service from Demon to retain the use of the Electronic Fax service. The current implementation requires this service to be a Standard Dial-up Account. If you have a Corporate Internet Service from Demon, please contact your individual Account Manager. To register for the Fax to Email service fill out the form at www.electronic-fax.uk.demon.net. How Long Before I Can Give The Number Out?It will take at most a day for your service to be set up, and we will send an email to your chosen mailbox to verify that you are in the system and ready to go. We strongly suggest that you send yourself a test Fax (by whatever means available to you) to make sure that everything is working before giving the number out for others to fax you. Publishing Your NumberYou can publish your fax number just like any other telephone number. We recommend one of the three following formats:
Do I Need Anything Else?You will need suitable software to view your fax messages. The format of the Fax attachment is TIFF, which can be viewed on Windows 95 OSR2 using the Imaging Viewer, for example. Why 0870?How Much Does It Cost To Call?The number we allocate you will have a dialling code of 0870. This dialling code is classed as "national rate" by Oftel, and charged appropriately by telecommunications companies. So people sending you faxes will be charged at a similar rate as sending faxes to a distant city. This rate is typically much lower than that of mobile and premium rate numbers. Please check with your telecommunications provider for their rates. At the time of writing, BT's Price List quoted these charges. These prices are only valid if your caller is a BT customer and do not include any of their discounts etc. Different Types of NumberCurrently only 0870 (National Rate) numbers are available. We are investigating if it is feasible to offer any alternative number ranges. I cannot dial 0870 numbers?Unfortunately, we have noticed that from some countries and telecommunication providers it is not possible to dial the 0870 number for the Fax to Email. Attempting this sometimes results in a "number not valid" message because the telecommunication provider does not recognise that format. If this occurs, please phone our helpdesk on 0845 272 2444, or mail helpdesk@demon.net with the telecommunication provider's name, then we can escalate the information and find out if it is possible to set routing up or not. How Does It Work?Incoming Fax MessagesIncoming faxes are presented as an attachment in an email message. The fax itself can be viewed with suitable software, depending on the computer and operating system you use. The message can be handled as any other email, including forwarding, storage and automatic processing - all depending on what email package you use. Printing your message will normally be done through the viewer program. A typical message will have a main text body that looks similar to this:
We can now examine each part of this message.
This message was received from "+441813711000 via Demon FAX Mail" which has a real address of fax-mail@fax.mail.demon.net...
... and sent to your special address, which eventually gets forwarded to your configured mailbox.
The subject of the message is a FAX of 1 page, received from a FAX machine with its Station ID set to "+44 181 371 1150".
If enough information was available at the time the message was received, then the system will have tried to construct a potential reply address for you. The reason that this Reply-To: header is so long is that ...
This is the date and time that the received message was passed to the mail system. This header in in GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) all year round.
This part of the text body is the delivery report. Above, the fax message was successfully received, it was made up of one page and sent from a fax machine identifying itself as "+441813711150" at the time given. The call lasted 39 seconds. Click here to see an example of how a received Electronic Fax looks. If anything goes wrong, such as the line being dropped during the call or some other problem, the delivery report will state this, and give a link to a web page where the possible error codes are explained. Errors Viewing FaxesWe received a number of reports during early testing of incoming fax messages being corrupt or unviewable. After investigation, it appeared in all cases that the testers mail gateways were truncating the messages or corrupting the contents of the attachment. If this happens to you, please contact your administrator or consult your software manuals and/or supplier. Why do my faxes appear squashed or stretched?This is due to the sending fax machine using different scanning resolutions in the horizontal and vertical directions (eg. the 'draft' mode might use one resolution whilst 'fine'/'letter' mode might use one with twice the number of pixels). The 'TIFF' format contains resolution information to stretch the images back to the correct aspect ratio but some viewing programs ignore this information. What is a 0 page Fax?This is an unfortunate error, caused when the sender's fax machine is sending the fax too slowly. What happens is that Fax to Email assumes that the fax has been transmitted, due to the slow transmission speed. It then adds the successful notification. Try it out on a different fax machine and see if you get a different result. How Many Faxes Can I Receive A Day?There is no limit on the number of faxes that you can receive per day, or any other time period in fact. Can I Receive Multiple Faxes At The Same Time?Yes. You can receive multiple messages in parallel. This means that your correspondents should never get a busy fax machine ever again. How Long Are Faxes Stored?Since faxes are treated as normal mail messages, all the same rules apply to them as to normal mail destined for our customers. See the Mail Acceptable Use Policy for further details.. Replying to a Fax MessageSometimes it will be possible to try to reply to a incoming fax via the TPC.INT email to Fax Service. The Fax to Email system examines the incoming CLI (Calling Line Identifier) of the call and the remote fax machines ID string and tries to build a potential reply address for you. The reason it is done this way is primarily because the CLI that the Fax to Email service receives could be that of the main switchboard number of the sender, and more information is needed to find which extension the fax machine is connected to. This information is usually supplied in the sender's fax machine's ID string, which can be configured by the sender. Sometimes this ID string doesn't have enough information in it or is a phrase (such as "ACME ACCOUNTS FAX") which will not help identify the senders extension. You should always carefully check the suggested reply address and alter it as appropriate if needed. Forwarding A Fax To Another Internet Email UserAs long as your email software doesn't change the contents of the message, you should be able to simply use the standard forwarding option on your email client. If your software allows it, you might also be able to simply drag and drop the attachment into another email. It is likely that the person or mailing list you are forwarding to does not need the delivery report information, just the body of the fax message. Does The Sender Need An Internet Access?No. As far as the sender of the fax is concerned, they are sending the pages to another fax machine. International Correspondents Complain They Cannot Reach Your NumberAlthough most of the world has now caught up with the Phone day changes that prefixed UK geographical numbers with a '1', there are still likely to be places in the world that will either instruct the caller to try placing a '1' before the 870 in the area code or just plain fail to place the call. This problem can only be rectified by the originating telephone company, and you should ask your correspondent to report the problem. What do I need to view Tiff files if I use a PC?You need a special viewer for this. The reason for this is because some tiff readers do not show multi-page page tiff images, the package we recommend for Windows 95/98/NT is imaging. Imaging for Windows is part of most Windows 95, 98, 2000 and all Windows NT 4.0 systems. To find out if you have Imaging for Windows, click on the Start button, select Programs, select Accessories, and look for "Imaging". If you do not have imaging then you can download it from the following URL: http://www.eastmansoftware.com/products/ImagingPro/ What do I need to view Tiff files if I use a Mac?To be able to view TIFF images on a Mac, you need suitable graphics software. Here are two pieces of software which should work fine: Graphic Converter http://lemkesoft.com/gcdownload_us.html NIH image: http://rsb.info.nih.gov/nih-image/ Is My Number Useful For Anything Else?Not yet. SecurityCan Anyone Else See My Faxes?The incoming fax message is converted into electronic format on our server and from there it enters the network as an ordinary email. The same principles apply to the security of your fax message as any other email. A traditional fax, received on a shared fax machine, could have many more potential viewers than a message received using this service. We are considering appropriate encryption technologies as a future enhancement to this service. Can My Faxes Be Misdelivered?The Fax to Email system has been designed so that the incoming messages take the shortest practical path from the receiving server to your mailbox. There is a remote chance, about the same as a normal fax message not being delivered correctly, that your incoming fax will be lost. This is however a very remote possibility. Travelling AccessIf you want to view your incoming email, and remember that faxes are just another form of email, then you can use POP3 to access your email box from anywhere in the world. See the Web Mail information pages for more details. The Web Mail service does not currently support the viewing of attachments, but you should still be able to process your new fax messages based on the header information. What Happens If I Cancel My Demon AccountYour fax number is only valid as long as you have another Internet service from Demon. If for any reason you no longer have a qualifying service, your fax service will cease to work. Your number will not be re-used for at least 3 months, but to make sure that we make efficient use of the numbers allocated to us, we will reallocate your number to a new user after this time.
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