ESAT Net, the Internet service provider, has launched a new product which allows users collect faxes, email and voice mail from one electronic source. JFAX is under exclusive licence to Esat Net in Ireland, and will allow Internet users have faxes and voice mail automatically forwarded to their email via an exclusive telephone number.
Costing £10 per month, JFAX eliminates the need for an answer phone or fax machine, and is ideally targeted at small and medium enterprises and executive travellers.
The fax or voice mail arrives as an email attachment which, when opened, will reproduce the hand written fax image on screen or replay the audio message through the PC's speakers. JFAX was the invention of a 27-year-old German rock musician, Jaye Muller.
Frustrated by constantly missing messages and faxes left in hotels during a European tour, he set about devising a way to constantly access voice and fax messages by email. One of the key advantages of JFAX is that all messages remain confidential as they are addressed to a subscriber's desktop, instead of spilling out of a fax machine or answer machine located in another part of the office.
Subscribers pay a once off connection charge of £20, and Esat Net says it plans to further enhance the service before the end of the year. Subscribers will eventually be able to email messages to fax machines at considerably reduced rates, and receive and reply to email messages over the phone via a text to speech facility.
