Receiving faxes

The equipment involved, the real price and the reason FaxTelecom only handles sending.

Fax reception starts with a number reserved for you alone. Calls arriving on it are answered either by a fax machine or by a server that decodes the signal, converts the pages to PDF and forwards the file by email. Sending simply means dialling a number; receiving means keeping a line open in your name around the clock. That reserved number carries a fixed cost, which is why free reception is so rare while sending a single page can cost nothing.

The three links in the chain

Desktop machine or online service, the principle never changes.

  1. 1

    A number in your name

    Your correspondent dials this number, geographic or non-geographic. Without it, the fax simply has nowhere to land.

  2. 2

    Signal decoding

    The fax tones are converted back into an image. With an online service this happens on the provider’s servers, so you need neither a device nor a phone socket.

  3. 3

    Delivery

    The rebuilt image reaches you, usually as a PDF in an email, sometimes in a customer portal. This is what people call fax-to-email.

Why receiving costs money

Phone numbers are allocated by the national regulator to carriers, which then rent them to customers. A number held for you is billed every month whether it takes a hundred faxes or none: it is a subscription, not pay-as-you-go.

Sending borrows a shared line for a minute or two, hence per-use pricing — or none at all for a single page. When an offer promises free reception, it is nearly always a time-limited trial, a pooled number with no guarantees, or a model that advertising pays for.

Your possible solutions

  • Subscribe to a fax-to-email service

    A rented number, faxes delivered as PDFs to your inbox. Ideal if you receive them often, and the only route once you no longer have a landline.

  • Keep your fax machine

    Sensible if the device already works. Do check your router, though: lines moved to voice over IP carry fax poorly, and the copper network is being shut down step by step.

  • Suggest another channel

    Often the easiest fix: whoever faxes you may well take email, post or an upload to a secure portal instead. A quick phone call could spare you a subscription.

Where received faxes end up

With fax-to-email, the document passes through the provider’s server and lands in your mailbox, where it stays until you delete it. Prescription, contract, case file: its protection then depends on that of your email account. If these documents hold personal data, that storage is what you should secure first.

FaxTelecom: sending only

FaxTelecom delivers your PDFs to landline fax numbers in seven countries, without an account, with optional PDF receipts. We don’t provide numbers and we don’t receive faxes — better to know before you go looking for the feature.

Send a fax with FaxTelecom

Questions about receiving

Can fax reception be free?
Rarely, and never for long. A reserved number costs the provider money every month. Free plans are trials, pooled numbers or offers that advertising pays for.
Is it possible to receive a fax without a landline?
Yes, with fax-to-email: the number lives on the provider’s system, which forwards every fax to you as a PDF. There’s no device or phone socket to set up.
What about on a smartphone?
Indirectly, yes: open the emailed PDF in your phone’s mail app and you’re reading the fax. A mobile number itself can’t take a fax, though, because mobile networks don’t carry that protocol.
Is anonymous reception an option?
No. A number is always assigned to a holder the carrier has identified. That is a regulatory obligation, not a commercial policy.
Does FaxTelecom provide a fax number?
No. FaxTelecom is for sending faxes only. We assign no numbers and never take incoming faxes for anyone.

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Where to go next

Hand-picked pages to help you prepare, send or prove your fax.

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