Basic idea as we heard it
Fax machines are old technology, but we still have tons of them on campus. Moving to VoIP is an incentive to look at newer technologies for achieving this still critical function. There are services such as efax.com that you can receive faxes to your email, instead of having to maintain an analog line and fax machine. Then if you need a paper copy you can print it whenever. In order to achieve a fax machine less environment, scanners will need to be available for scanning in and sending documents that require signatures.
A number of places still require the use of fax machines such as submitting flexible spending reimbursements, but even that is changing as they now accept emailed PDFs.
A couple places are looking at doing different things. CSAIL has Xerox MFD setup to scan documents and put them in AFS. The MIT Media Lab is looking at approaches to reduce the number of fax machines they have while maintaining the functionality including the long standing fax numbers.
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