I thought it was clear that I was opposed to moving away from phone numbers. Of course if the system that OP was talking about was almost completely identical t

I thought it was clear that I was opposed to moving away from phone numbers. Of course if the system that OP was talking about was almost completely identical to a fax experience, then what I am saying does not apply. This is what the OP said: > Sending the "fax" simply emails a PDF of the scanned pages over the internet and then prints the "fax" automatically? Which, I read as implying that the user would have to enter something like an email address, to which I replied: > Besides that, there is still no replacement for phone numbers. A phone number immediately returns if it is available to receive a transmission, and a fax on the other end confirms that it is set up, and you can be pretty sure that it isn't just going to languish in an unread mailbox somewhere. A phone number also takes more effort to set up, so will probably be treated better. Of course, if an IT department mapped an POTS phone numbers to their mail server, and then had that email print out a pdf attachment on the other end, then yes, that would be fine. But, actually this is done already in some places anyway. My old university had a system where incoming faxes were converted into emails and forwarded as email attachments, and I don't see why the IT dept could not have also configured it to automatically print out incoming emails, or even relay to an outgoing fax line. But it does seem to me like a lot of trouble.