With little to no consideration for football managers counting down the day's until the end the January transfer window, Ofcom has confirmed the death of the fax.
The UK communications regulator today announced it has decided to change its minimum service requirements, so that network operators BT Group and Kingston Coms are no longer mandated to deliver faxes.
For those too young to know, sending a fax (or facsimile) is a bit sending an email using physical document, a scanner and a telephone. It’s a mid-to-late twentieth century technology which for the first time allow copies of documents, often legal or contractual, quickly and were particularly prevalent in fast-closing business transactions.
Nowadays, the seem to surface into public awareness only twice per year - on the Premier League transfer deadline days, when we hear that contracts or player registration documents are being sent from one club to another.
In practice, meanwhile, its much more likely the contemporary technologies and software are instead bing used.
"The current USO was set out in 2003, when fax machines were more prevalent and email and instant messaging were less ubiquitous,” Ofcom said in a statement.
"So, at that time it was important the USO required BT and KCOM to provide fax services.
"Almost 20 years later, and the telecoms landscape has changed.
"Not only are alternatives to fax machines now more widely available, migration of telephone networks to internet protocol (IP) technology means fax services can no longer be guaranteed to work in the same way."
Ofcom added: “This change does not mean that fax services will stop working immediately, but instead there will no longer be an obligation on BT and KCOM to provide fax under our rules - it will ensure that our rules reflect the requirements in the universal service legislation and are not unduly burdensome.
“Current users of fax will need to look for alternatives (such as email) ahead of their telephony networks being migrated to IP - the timescales for this will depend on their telephony provider, but is expected to be before the end of 2025.