mBox phone/fax

I’ve been using the mBox fax service for about a year now. It costs $8 a month for a Melbourne number to receive faxes, which are sent to me by email as PDF files.

There’s no need to worry about fax paper and toner, and more importantly I don’t have to pay $30 a month or more in rental for a dedicated line. When we closed the newspaper I had less need for a fax, but occasionally I do need to receive one.

Today I upgraded to the mBox gold account. It only cost an extra dollar a month to add webmail and phone messaging. The number now acts also as a voicemail service. I can either dial in to check the messages, or have them sent to me as emails in wav or MP3 format.

It’s not something I’ll need all that often, but it’s a plausible alternative to running a mobile, except you can choose to answer the calls with a mobile, of course. The main use is that I can divert my phone when busy to the voicemail.

There’s an option to send text messages from a web browser as well, but you pay extra for that.

Really, it’s all gadget stuff, but interesting. I think there’s a future in unified messaging and this is half a step towards that.

Update: The mBox service has been discontinued.