UK Regulator Ofcom Sounds Death Knell of the Fax Machine

The British communications regulator has sounded the death knell of the fax machine, just over 30 years after it revolutionised office life. From a report: Ofcom said on Tuesday it had started the process to scrap legislation compelling BT, the former state-owned monopoly, to provide dedicated landlines for the devices at affordable prices. The facsimile machine, first commercialised by Xerox in 1964, became a ubiquitous feature of offices around the world from the late 1980s, but has since been displaced by a combination of email, scanners, cloud and instant messaging services. The old technology works by processing the contents of a fixed graphic image, transmitting it through the landline via audio-frequency tones, which are then received by another fax machine, interpreted and reconstructed into a printed replica of the original. "As digital technology and broadband services have developed, the fax machine has been overtaken by email and document sharing software that offer the same or better functionality," Ofcom said in a statement. "We're now consulting on changes to telecoms rules that could see the fax machine become a thing of the past."

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