The Urgent Action Network


Sending an Appeal


Faxing a Message
The fax machine may be thought of as a more modern telex terminal. Like a telex, a fax message travels between two terminals, or fax machines, via a phone line. Most high level government officials have fax machines as do many individuals, schools and businesses in this country. The cost of sending a fax is simply the cost of an international phone call and is automatically charged to your telephone account. A fax message can be more like a letter in length because it is so inexpensive to send. There are no special conventions although you may want to include your fax number in your message and request a faxed reply from the official.
To send a fax, slip your paper in the machine and dial: 011 + the 2-digit country code + city code (1 to 4 digits) + fax phone number. When a government official's fax number is known and available, you will see it in the address section of the UA appeal. Be aware that government officals frequently turn off their fax machines or change their numbers as they begin to get hundreds of faxed messages. If you get a busy signal or the fax terminal does not respond, try back later. If you are still unsuccessful, just put the fax appeal in an envelope and send it as an airmail letter. It is most important to get your appeal to the official, so do not let a bad fax number stop your message.
Because your fax message is received as it appears, you can send petitions with signatures. You can use a letterhead which may add to its effectiveness and help to individualize your appeal. Faxes can also be sent by sending e-mail to a service who will send the fax for you. As with sending telegrams and telexes, ask your Internet Service Provider for details on how to have your email message sent as a fax to the government official. One advantage of sending faxes by an internet service is that the service can retry several times if the government's line is not answering.
Email to Fax Services
A study by Spencer Graves, statistician and member of the Urgent Action Network, December, 1999
Some members of the Amnesty International Urgent Action Network may have use for a service that allows you to send e-mails that get delivered as faxes. Such service is available today from multiple sources. This note compares three such services. One of the three, faxcube.com, seems to be substantially superior to the alternatives for most Urgent Action communications, as explained below.
Before getting to that, however, I want to explain that I have no financial interest in any of these services. I'm a common citizen who wants to be able to send e-mails that get delivered as faxes anyplace in the world. Well, I'm uncommon in that my work keeps me away from home a good portion of the time. However, I'm never far from the Internet. It is therefore easy for me to keep up with Urgent Action Appeals and it would be relatively easy for me to respond provided I could do so via e-mail. I celebrated Christmas in part by surfing the web for an e-mail to fax gateway. I found three: faxcube.com, netmoves.com , and faxaway.com. All three companies offer other services, and users with other needs may find faxaway or netmoves preferable. However, for a common citizen on a budget who wants to send a few brief e-mails each month that get delivered in Beijing or La Paz or Washington, faxcube.com seems to be the provider of choice.
This conclusion is not obvious from a casual review of the price schedules that the three services publish on their web sites. A proper comparison requires reading the fine print and doing some simulated computations. I did this, considering a user who sent one short e-mail to each of 11 countries named in Urgent Action appeals between Nov. 1 and Dec. 23, 1999. Faxcube says that most fax traffic moves at around 30 seconds per page, and the present analysis assumes that this is approximate true. In a small test of this, two one page faxes and one two page fax were delivered in the US in 26, 29 and 29 seconds per page, respectively.
Netmoves, in contrast, charges by the page. Their per page charges were 12-15% less than the per minute charge of faxcube and faxaway in the 11 country comparison (discussed below). In addition, netmoves charges $4.95 per month, in contrast to $1 per month for faxaway and no monthly charge but a $2.50 minimum for faxcube. In addition, the netmoves user must purchase their software for $29.95, while faxcube and faxaway can be accessed from any e-mail program.