Despite alternatives, fax holds its own

Do you send and receive faxes? I can safely say I haven’t in over three years, when I began working in a home office. I have a printer/scanner with fax capability, but I don’t have a dedicated line for it, and I’ve never used it.

Nevertheless, fax refuses to die. Robert Bichefsky, a senior manager for product development GL Communications, said, “Despite rapid advancements in communication technology, fax transmission continues to hold its ground as dominant form of communication over a wide variety of wired and wireless networks. Fax transmission is so vital that any new technology must address ways and means of transporting it—that is, fax over IP (FoIP) and fax over wireless networks. So fax is here to stay for the foreseeable future.”

Consequently, GL has recently announced a comprehensive suite of fax testing solutions over IP, TDM, and PSTN networks. (Read more here.)

A 2013 market-research report from Davidson Consulting backs up Bichefsky’s optimism with regard to fax. The firm predicted that the market for computer-based fax will reach $455 million in 2017, up from $385 million in 2012, representing a 3.4% CAGR. The firm also predicted that the overall fax service industry would reach $2.795 billion in 2018, up from $1.365 billion in 2013.

And CouponChili has an interesting infographic about fax usage in 2013.

Also see Lubor Ptacek’s blog post “How come fax isn’t dead?”