Quick Dips

Just The Fax, Ma'am

Telecommunications can be a form of electronic roulette, with callers talking to fax machines and faxes going to answerphones. A Canterbury company hopes to solve that with their new Faxcatcher TCI,a sophisticated system that detects the nature of in-coming calls and routes them to the appropriate destination.

Many fax/phone switches use electronic voice messages directing the caller to announce whether they are a fax or a real person. This can be time-consuming and frustrating. It also has a relatively high error rate, particularly for calls which don't use tone standards.

The Faxcatcher can mimic the sound of a phone ringing while it listens to the call to decide if it is a fax or a person. This eliminates the need for messages and encourages the caller to hold the line. To check for non-standard fax transmissions, it listens again during the answerphone message and will automatically cut in if a fax is detected. It has a number of user-selectable options and can be plugged into a standard telephone socket, making installation easy.

Business Distributors Ltd has gained international attention with the device. The company recently established a business relationship with Technology Concepts of the United States to gain a source of reliable componentry and to help with export sales.