LetterAgent
Mail physical letters by just asking your AI assistant.
A fax modem is a piece of hardware that lets a computer send and receive faxes directly over a phone line, without a standalone fax machine. No, you almost certainly do not need one: online fax services let you send and receive faxes over the internet with no phone line, no extra hardware, and no software to install. The fax modem is a solved problem wearing a costume from 1998.
In the dial-up era, the modem was the computer's voice on the phone network: it converted digital data into analog tones and back. A fax modem did the same trick for fax protocols, speaking the handshake language (the squeals and chirps you hear on a fax call) and transmitting page images as audio. With a fax modem and software like the old WinFax or Windows Fax and Scan, your PC became the fax machine: type a document, dial a number, and the computer handled the call.
It was genuinely useful for its time. Law offices and small businesses could fax straight from their word processor, receive faxes as files instead of curling thermal paper, and skip buying a dedicated machine. The catch was always the phone line: you needed a real analog line plugged into the modem, and the computer had to be on and listening to receive anything.
| Fax modem | Online fax service | |
|---|---|---|
| Phone line required | Yes, an analog line | No |
| Extra hardware | Yes, the modem itself | No |
| Receiving faxes | Computer must be on and answering | Arrives as an email attachment or app notification |
| Sending from a phone | No | Yes |
| Setup effort | Drivers, line wiring, software | Upload a file and type a number |
Yes, oddly enough. USB fax modems are still manufactured and sold, mostly for a shrinking set of cases: industrial equipment that expects a modem, point-of-sale and alarm systems, and offices with compliance rules that insist on direct phone-line faxing with no third-party service in the middle. If you are reading this article, you are almost certainly not in that group.
The deeper reason they linger is the same reason fax itself lingers: some workflows were certified around them. A medical practice whose compliance documentation describes fax-via-modem has to re-certify to change it, and nobody volunteers for that paperwork. New setups have no such excuse.
The normal way is an online fax service: you upload your document (usually a PDF), type the destination fax number, and the service's servers handle the call to the recipient's machine or virtual number. Nothing plugs into your computer, nothing needs a dial tone, and it works from a laptop on hotel wifi exactly as well as from a desk. Receiving works in reverse: your faxes arrive as files you can read, forward, or archive.
The newest version of that idea skips even the fax service's website. With LetterAgent, you describe the fax to your AI assistant in a normal conversation, approve the exact quoted price for the verified page count, and the fax is sent. No account, no modem, no phone line, no software. The fax modem solved "how does a computer use the phone network"; the current question is just "how do I get these pages to that number", and the answer no longer involves the phone network at your end at all.
Receiving changed just as much. Where a fax modem needed your PC powered on and listening, an online fax number collects incoming faxes for you around the clock and delivers them as files. If you need a fax number mainly to receive the occasional document, a virtual number does the job with none of the hardware. The only people who should still be buying fax modems are the ones whose equipment or compliance paperwork names one specifically, and they already know who they are.
Ready to fax it? Fax with LetterAgent: describe it to your AI assistant, approve the exact quoted price, and it is sent.
LetterAgent is a working name. Prices include print, postage, and our service fee. US prices in USD, Canadian prices in CAD (Canadian prices exclude applicable sales tax, added at checkout). Currently in private testing.
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