From Windows to Warsaw via fax

A new desktop-to-fax product is the latest enhancement from Interfax, a company specializing in international faxing over the Internet through a network of overseas distribution partnerships.

These partners operate nodes-links between the Internet and the local PTT-in 22 cities around the globe. Most of Interfax's distributors are in underserved or highly regulated countries such as Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Nepal and Poland, where fax services are barely available or exorbitantly priced due to PTT regulation. Users can save an average of 30% to 40%, said Stephen Harbourne, marketing vice president at Interfax.

Subscribers to the Interfax service are given a personal identification number and a line of DOS code that will configure their PCs for the Interfax network printer. Documents go out over the Internet to the designated node, where they are switched onto the local phone network and to the selected fax machine.

Although Interfax does not originate or terminate faxes in the U.S., a fax addressed outside the company's network is hauled back to U.S. nodes in Boston, Miami or Minneapolis and sent out again over phone lines.

"Our goal is to get as many nodes as we can around the world in order to do as little of that off-net traffic as possible," said Harbourne. Interfax expects to have 40 nodes in place globally by the end of the year.