It's official — the fax machine is finally going to that great junkyard in the sky. It appears to have drawn its last digital breaths this week when Ofcom announced that it would most likely support a government decision not to continue with its legal duty to have departmental fax machines under Universal Service Order legislation, a law that also ensures that Britons have telephone services at an affordable price.
Despite their popularity in the last two decades of the 20th Century, the death knell was effectively sounded when telephone networks switched to internet protocol systems (known as IP) from the old telephone network, meaning that fax machines would eventually become incompatible. It happened at the beginning of October, when the Government amended the Electronic Communications (Universal Service) Order 2003, removing fax machine services from the Universal Service Order.
Hansard, the official record of Parliamentary debates, noted that aides working at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport had conducted a survey within its sphere of influences and had "found that the use of fax was minimal and alternatives are being sought where its use still continues”.
