Why did my fax take so long to transmit?

Question:

Why did my fax take so long to transmit?

Answer:

The transmission speed of your fax can be affected by several factors, here are the main three:

  • Document.  Documents vary enormously in terms of complexity of the information displayed on each page and the number of pages overall.  The more black and white variations on each page, the longer it will take to send your fax. If your fax contains large amounts of text and/or complex graphics, it will take longer to send than a simple document. This especially applies to faxes containing gray-scale shading or backgrounds. Gray-scale consists of thousands of tiny black/white variations or pixels, each of which have to be transmitted by fax as separate pieces of data. The more data that needs to be transmitted, the longer the time to send the fax.
  • Quality - A poor connection or noise on the telephone line will slow down a fax transmission. In some cases, the transmission can be cut off partway through sending the fax, and the fax must be re-tried. Unlike the vast majority of other provider, at Sfax we do not charge you for any wasted time spent connected to the receiving fax machine, even if the fax requires multiple attempts to send.
  • Speed. - Sfax is configured to send at the fastest possible fax transmission speeds. However, if the receiving fax machine is an older fax machine, is configured on a network or is experiencing other problems, transmission speeds may drop to 9600bps or less. You can consider this like talking.  You can only communicate as fast as the person listening can understand – and so it is with faxing.