Selective fax routing through the internet

Abstract

A newly defined facsimile (fax) handling service, to be performed by carriers in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) on calls originating from standard analog fax sending equipment, includes: a) intercepting and recording direct dialed digits, representing final destinations of such calls, at PSTN switching nodes in areas local to respective call origins; b) returning acknowledgements from these nodes to respective callers in the form of fax tones corresponding to those usually returned by standard analog fax receiving equipment; c) locally intercepting and recording signals representing the fax image information intended for delivery to the called destinations; d) returning a completion signal indication to the originating equipment; and e) offline to the originating equipment, managing the delivery of the recorded image information to the final destinations represented by the recorded call digits.