UUNet Technologies Inc has announced its UUFax international facsimile service over the internet to capture some of the $25,000m per year international fax market. According to telecommunications Consultants, TeleGeography Inc, international phone calls are worth $61bn a year, of which 40% is fax traffic and UUNet, the Internet Service Provider division of the US telco WorldCom Inc, is looking to take a share of this market. UUNet believes that taking international trade from its owner WorldCom will not be an issue, as WorldCom has around a 15% stake in the international market, and the trade will only move within the group, so any loss to WorldCom will be money changing pocket. The difference between this and other offerings is that it comes from an Internet Service Provider with 1000 POPS Points of Presence, and its service can exchange all types of Fax traffic, Fax to Fax, PC to Fax, or e-mail to fax, unlike other internet fax services, which as yet have not managed to do all three. The traffic UUNet claims will be completely secure as it will be running over UUNet@s international infrastructure. The service, available by the end of the year, will use Ascend Communications Inc’s dial-up access concentrators, initially at 100 UUNet POPs worldwide, with the fax software provided by privately owned Chicago Illinois-based Open Port Technology, which has developed both client software running under Windows 95 or NT and server software running under UNIX or NT. UUNet was tight-lipped about how much it had invested in the service and was not prepared to reveal any financial details of deals with Ascend or Open Port. It was just as guarded about the service pricing structure, and instead the company committed itself to offering a saving of between 30% and 55% on the current cost of international faxing.
