I understand in the end, for the most part, the bits have to get picked up and passed down an analog phone line owned by some local TelCo for my recipient with their 33.6k modem fax to pick it up on their end.

So what good is faxing anyway?  If you've got a scanner and email you can accomplish pretty much the same thing (and a lot faster assuming you've got some broadband connection).

So, you need to receive a fax without a fax machine, that's not terribly difficult.  Go over to eFax and sign up for a free account and get some crazy ass fax number like 1.509.463.6597 (yeah, that's mine, fax me if you like).  Sending faxes are an entirely different matter.  With eFax I have to sign up for a "plus" account for $13 a month and pay $0.10 per sheet to fax.

There has to be a better way.  (Sure, suck it up and buy a fax machine).  So I went off and searched and most of the "free trials" I found went into how it cost to actually place the call to deliver the fax so during the trial period we'll email the fax back to you so you get the idea, uh, thanks.

I then stumbled across The Phone Company, a volunteer organization that helps provide international fax coverage through donation of hardware, time and bandwidth.  It seems like a great deal, unfortunately the number I was trying to fax to wasn't in their coverage area but yours might be.  If you're in a position to help out you might want to read their sales pitch.

In the end I went with eFax and their 30 day trial of "plus".  And by trial they mean you pay the monthly fee and fax charges but at the end of it if you want out you can still have your original, free, 509 fax number.

Now playing: - Pantera - Far Beyond Driven - [06] - Hard Lines, Sunken Cheeks

UPDATE:

Just got an email from eFax so apparently it's more than $0.10 a page. 

Uh, thanks, again.  Luckily I don't have a need to send outgoing faxes often enough for this to be an issue.

UPDATE:

Just got an email from Gary and he pointed me to InterFax which apparently just charges per page with no monthly fee.  Might be worth looking into.