The stakes are high because e-mail and fax are big business. The world
has an estimated 100 million fax machines in use, which generate more than
$90 billion a year in revenue for phone companies, or nearly one-third of
corporate phone costs, according to analyst Peter Davidson. Moving to
Internet fax services can lower those costs.
While fax use is growing at 20 percent a year, e-mail is growing even
faster. America Online alone handles 56 million of the messages a day.
Within three years, Davidson estimates, 12 percent of the world's faxes
will be routed to e-mail baskets rather than facsimile machines.
Not every fax company is targeting consumers. Another industry veteran
plans to announce a different Internet strategy today. Publicly traded
FaxSav Inc. changed its name to NetMoves and is eyeing the corporate
market for delivering documents over the Internet. NetMoves is
developing software to help companies reduce paperwork costs through
such means as e-mail confirmation of stock trades and certified e-mail
versions of the direct-deposit payroll stubs that companies now mail to
employees.
"There will be a big cost savings," says NetMoves chief executive Thomas
Murawski, "because the price to mail something in an envelope averages
about $1.50. That will come down to below 10 cents to the nickel range."
That does not mean a reduction in overall use of paper. One dirty little
secret of the digital age is that electronic copies tend to generate more, not
less, paper, because people -- especially older folks who grew up without
computers -- crave the tangible expression of their ideas.
The free-fax companies likely will go down in Internet history as among a
wave of innovators that tapped the medium's "viral" marketing power to
spread a new service, only to be bought by the telecommunication and
media giants that are building mass online audiences. |
