Ocean Navigator: Newsletter #4


Just the facts: fax


OK, you've got your boat hooked up for making phone calls and even receiving phone calls while you're out cruising. Then one of your engine parts fails and you need to fix it. No problem, you pick up your satellite phone and give yourself a little pat on the back for having the foresight to install it on the boat. In this case, a SSB wouldn't do you much good - after all, your mechanic doesn't sit around listening to the SSB radio all day for any of his customers that might need help. So, confident that you'll get help, you dial his number. You're in luck and he's actually able to take your call. You chat for a while, and realize that you can fix your problem though it requires some careful re-assembly of certain parts. He says to you, "it's really no problem if you follow the diagram. I'll fax it over to you."

Uh-oh.

I can talk to him on the phone. I can ask him to send me and email. But a fax? Hmm - never thought I'd have any use for getting faxes on a boat!

What do I do now?

Don't fret. We'll get you out of this jam. All you need is a little foresight, and an email account. For a nice change, this won't even cost you anything extra! While Inmarsat's Mini-M service allows you to hook up a standard fax machine directly to the Mini-M terminal, Iridium and Globalstar don't support faxing. However, there are a couple of companies that provide a fax service using your email. Here's how it works:

Visit an email/fax provider's website before you leave. Two of the best known are eFax (www.efax.com) and J2, formerly jFax (www.j2.com). Actually, eFax is now owned by J2, but is still being marketed under its own brand. Both services offer a very similar fax-to-email service. Upon signing up (a free process you can take care of right on the web), you're assigned a unique fax number. This number is randomly assigned from a pool of numbers available to the provider. Unless you demand otherwise (and you're willing to pay the extra $10-12 per month), you'll likely get a number somewhere in the midwest. This number is assigned to you and only to you. Someone needing to send you a fax simply sends to your newly assigned fax number. A virtual fax machine receives the fax, digitizes it and then emails it to you as a compressed attachment.

The size of the attachment will vary quite a bit depending on how "busy" the page is. A quick review of some inbound faxes reveals sizes of 10 KB to 35 KB per page. A simple line drawing will be at the bottom end of this range. While a photograph may exceed the top end. On a testbed Iridium system, I was able to receive 10 KB in about a minute; Globalstar was even faster than this. End result -- about $1.50 for a single incoming fax page.

What's the catch? Well, for the entry-level free service you can't send any outgoing faxes. That requires signing up for the premium services at $5 to $12 per month. Still a bargain if you absolutely need to be able to send faxes. Usage charges of about $0.10 per outgoing page may apply.

You also have the option of signing up for a local number (rather than a randomly assigned one). This only works if you live in one of the areas the provider covers. Up here in Maine, I'm out of luck. No local numbers are available. However, you can sign up for a toll free (800) number for the benefit of those planning on faxing you. Again you'll need the premium service, and you'll also pay usage charges of up to $0.20 per incoming page.

As an incentive to get you to upgrade from the free to the premium level, you'll also get a voicemail box with the incoming messages compressed and sent to your email.

Since it's free - my advice is to go ahead and sign up even if you don't think you need it. It might just get you out a jam down the road.

Since it's free - my advice is to go ahead and sign up even if you don't think you need it. It might just get you out a jam down the road. Don't dally though - it looks like eFax may already be discontinuing their free service in favor of the premium. As of today, jFax/J2 still has a free service available. Sign up while you can.

Besides - did you really have any spare room left on the boat for a whole fax machine anyway?

- Dan Piltch
dpiltch@MarineComputer.com


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