Scott Reynolds <sar@gol.com> wrote in message news:<cae5ku$ha6$1@newsflood.tokyo.att.ne.jp>...
> On 6/12/2004 1:25 PM, Ryan Ginstrom wrote:
> 
> > Murgi wrote:
> > 
> >>Actually there is commercial service in Tokyo, but I don't know
> >>whether on can get the service for one month only (3500 Yen/month
> >>approx.).
> >>You send a fax to a given phone number in Tokyo, and the fax is
> >>converted to a TIFF file and automatically sent to whereever the
> >>receiver is.
> > 
> > I use that service (all@inbox). I don't see why you couldn't get just a
> > month. You would just sign up, then cancel after a month.
> > 
> > I've been happy with it myself. Another good feature of the service is that
> > it includes voicemail, sent to you as audio files.
> 
> I tried to sign up with them some time back (more than a year ago), but 
> they were no longer accepting new accounts. It seems that they are 
> having some sort of problem getting new telephone numbers assigned by 
> NTT. I've checked their page periodically since then, but the situation 
> has not improved.
> 
> Instead I ended up going with efax.com, which is a US company but can 
> give you a local fax number in Japan. I would like to recommend them 
> (and their service does do pretty much what I need), but I have started 
> to have billing problems with them recently (erroneous charges that they 
> claim not to know about and that I then have to have canceled by talking 
> to my credit card issuer), so I can't really recommend them to Sigi.
> 
> I'd be curious to know if there are any other alternatives out there 
> that people are happy with.

I've used the US (free) version of eFax.com, and, considering the
price, was satisfied.  I did get lots of junk faxes, not sure if
that's a problem with the pay version.

One thing you might consider would be signing up for an IP telephone
service.  US services like Vonage claim that you can connect your VoIP
phone or fax from any internet connection in the world.  One nice
thing about Vonage is that it's "unbundled" from internet service; not
sure if Yahoo! BB phone is available without Yahoo! BB.  You might
check with Fusion Communications (www.0038.net).

-- J