From: 0003991080@mcimail.com (Proctor & Associates)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Sending Faxes Overseas
Date: 6 Apr 92 21:05:00 GMT
Article-I.D.: eecs.telecom12.300.1
Organization: TELECOM Digest
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 300, Message 1 of 11

In TELECOM Digest V12 #295 (Mexican Rating DB and Pricing Software),
wright@irie.ais.org (Carl Wright) writes:
 
> In the course of our work with Telefonos de Mexico, we have developed
> and now offer our Mexican All-Points(tm) Rating Database and Mexican
> Call Pricer.

Although this is for pricing outbound calls from Mexico, it reminded
me of a bit of a price shock that I got last week when sending a fax
to Mexico.
 
A company in Mexico faxed a request to us for some literature on our
telephone demonstrators.  They asked that we send the data sheets back
to them via fax.
 
Our normal data sheet for our most popular telephone demonstrators has
four sides, but the first page is really a cover sheet with a picture.
Given that it has lots of fax time-hogging background shading and not
much more data than a nice picture on the front, I mentioned to our
receptionist that she could save money by leaving the front page off.
So she sent three pages plus a fax cover sheet.
 
Or at least she tried to.
 
She called the fax number listed on their fax, but kept getting some
sort of call progress tone; she couldn't tell if it was ringing or
busy.  We made a couple of calls to AT&T to verify that the number and
city codes were correct for the called location in Tabasco, and then I
attempted it.
 
Someone answered speaking Spanish, so I used my standard fax procedure
for calls to foreign countries where a fax number is answered by a
live person.
 
I yelled "FAX!  FAX!"  This seems to be understood in most languages
now.  The person at the other end mumbled something like "momento."
 
Eventually I heard the familiar fax answer tone.  I pushed send, and
walked away.
 
A few minutes later I walked by the machine, and was alarmed to see
that the speed had stepped down to 2400 bps.  The line hadn't SOUNDED
bad when I called, but maybe they were using one of those cheap fax
cards that won't do 9600 bps.  We seem to be plagued with these
lately; folks call us up requesting literature, and want it faxed NOW.
What they want faxed is often multi-paged and highly detailed, so it
gets expensive.  Then when we send the fax, we get connected to a
machine that cannot communicate above 4800 bps, so it costs us twice
as much to send.
 
After the fax transmission was completed, the report from the machine
showed that it had taken slightly over 23 minutes to send these four
pages!
 
Out of curiosity I called AT&T to see what this cost us.  The rate was
$1.98 for the first minute, and $1.89 for each additional.  It seemed
odd that the charge for subsequent minutes was so close to the first
minute charge, but thats what they told me.  Given the delay in
getting the customer to turn on their machine, we will probably be
billed for 26 minutes for this call ... an incredible $49.23 for three
pages plus a cover sheet!
 
The volume of this sort of fax traffic is getting to the point that we
really need some brief "fax friendly" product data sheets that use
bolder graphics with no background.  I also would love it if our fax
machines could be set so that they will disconnect, rather than step
down to slower than 9600 bps.  There are plenty of times when I don't
mind the slower rate, but it would be nice if we had the option of
restricting it.
 
Occasionally I run into a problem with faxing to third-world countries
where either they have problems manually switching to a fax machine on
a shared line, or the connection is real flaky, plagued with slow
speeds or random disconnects.  In these cases, as long as I just need
to send text without graphics, I have found MCI Mail's fax service to
be a very economical alternative.  I can set the retry for the maximum
of 12 hours, and it doesn't matter how many attempts at whatever speed
it takes, or if the calls are usually disconnected mid-transmission; I
only get billed for that one successful completed transmission.
 
 
Paul Cook                         206-881-7000
Proctor & Associates         MCI Mail 399-1080
15050 NE 36th St.            fax: 206-885-3282
Redmond, WA  98052-5317    3991080@mcimail.com