Importance

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Abstract

A facility which, in its most preferred method and apparatus embodiments, enhances facsimile communication through a public switched telephone network between a sender at a transmitting facsimile machine and an intended recipient at a receiving facsimile machine by providing sender-based store and forward services which help ensure confidential, timely delivery of facsimile information through, for any particular facsimile transaction, analyzing sender facsimile bitmapped image data to confirm billing availability and recognize a notification facsimile telephone number and a confirmation facsimile telephone number, transmitting generated notification facsimile data to a facsimile machine at the notification facsimile telephone number to produce a notification report providing notification of pending, available confidential facsimile data, transmitting sender facsimile data to a receiving facsimile machine during a telephone call from an intended recipient at the receiving facsimile machine upon receiving a valid confidential retrieval code from the intended recipient, and subsequently transmitting generated confirmation facsimile data to a facsimile machine at the confirmation facsimile telephone number to produce a delivery confirmation report suggesting delivery not only to a facsimile machine, but to the intended recipient, wherein the confidential retrieval code is randomly generated and shown on the notification report unless supplied by the sender with the sender facsimile data, and wherein a monitoring service is provided whereby delivery status information is made available to the sender.

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First Claim