Japanese carriers, who have been quick to offer internet telephony services, are now looking to Internet faxing as a way to undercut rivals and to enter new markets. DDI, the second largest domestic carrier in Japan after NTT Corp, now says it will offer the service through a licensing agreement with Edison, New Jersey-based company FaxSav. The move will aid DDI’s push to enter the international telecom services market. DDI customers will be able to send faxes either from fax machines over the Internet to 70 different countries. While internet telephony is hampered by the degradation of quality using packet based networks, such as the internet, the nature of fax traffic is far more suitable. Internet faxing consists of one-way, all-in-one messages communication. Given that Internet fax can cut costs without damaging quality of service and that some estimates suggest that close to half of all international calls are made up of fax traffic, the telecoms carriers seem to face a greater threat to revenues from Internet faxing. DDI will be reselling a FaxSav’s Internet fax service as well as licensing the US company’s Faxnode server software. FaxSav has a network of nodes around the world to complete the fax send once it has traveled across the internet. DDI is offering the service as part of its Alpha 5 customer service scheme. At present, the service is only for fax machines and laptops with phones although an e-mail version is planned. Meanwhile, KDD – the international carrier which already operates domestic and international internet phone services, is also planning its own Internet fax service. KDD will act as a wholesaler, however, with the aim of selling the service on to Internet service providers rather than telecoms resellers. KDD is already offering Internet telephony while NTT Corp is still testing the service. ISPs including Rimnet and Niftyserve also offer the service.
