These companies are budnling the FAX software with every cable Modem 3COM ships.
@Home, .comfax Team To Offer
Internet Faxing
By Brandy Pfalmer
High-speed cable modem company @Home
Networks (www.home.net) is bringing
Internet protocol (IP) fax service to the broad
residential market.The company recently
struck a deal with IP fax company .comfax
Inc. (www.comfax.com).
The agreement enables subscribers of
@Home service to use .comfax's technology
for online faxing through a free trial
subscription, which provides the user with 10
free minutes of faxing any-where inside the
continental United States.
"When @Home goes to customers and offers
them high-speed Internet access they pay
around $40 a month, [and] they get a
hundred times the speed," says Ben Feder,
chairman and CEO of .comfax. "A lot of
consumers have a second telephone line for
accessing the Internet, and they can throw
that away [because of the high-speed access].
"We believe one in five of those customers
say, 'I also use that second line for my fax
machine.' Now we have a solution for that
fax machine, and we save consumers $25 to
$35 a month when they get access to the
Internet on cable modems," he says.
Not only are customers able to reduce costs
by eliminating phone lines, users are able to
fax anywhere in the United States at 10 cents
per minute. Also, .comfax offers users fax
broadcast, fax tracking and fax mailbox
capabilities.
.comfax is hitting a portion of the market, the
residential one, that is new to alternative
faxing methods.
"As far as I know, we are the first [in the
residential market with this type of service],"
Feder explains. "This is our second play in
that market; we are also bundled in every
cable modem that 3Com [Corp.
(www.3com.com)] sells in retail."
Feder also believes that the play in the
residential market is a complement to the
company's push with the corporate one.
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