The information superhighway is here and now, with new evidence that local firms are saving more than 40 percent on long distance fax communications through the use of the Internet.

Insurers, legal and accounting firms are capitalising on the service being offered by Internet Bermuda Ltd. (IBL).

The service is called faxSAV, and the more a company sends overseas faxes, the more they save through the use of a worldwide fax network.

There is no expensive equipment to buy or up-front charges to deal with, you just plug in a faxSAV Network connector between your telephone line and fax machine or PC modem and dial a fax number like you normally do.

There are no additional charges or Internet access required, just lower fax charges.

IBL's director of technology, Neil Movold, said that faxes typically take between 1.0 and 1.5 minutes to send. Overseas charges would be for that time period.

But he noted that legal and accounting firms and others sometimes are required to send faxes of more than 100 pages that consume much more access time. The fax bill in many firms has become so significant it is not surprising that companies are using the IBL service.

There are a variety of service levels, but the one IBL is currently offering involves a simple device, engineered by IBL, that connects to the fax machine.

"Nothing changes for the user,'' said Mr. Movold. "There is no social engineering required. You send a fax the way you normally do. But when the fax machine dials the number, the box picks up the tone differences and then dials a local number into some switching equipment. So the long distance part is eliminated.

"The fax is then routed through the Internet to fax nodes throughout the world and finds the nearest node to the final destination and then dials the number from there.

"We're taking advantage of the Internet and its cost structure to route that fax to its destination, unchanged from the way it was originally sent.

"And then instead of being billed $1.15 a minute to the US, or more as it is to other countries, we bill you something like 40 percent less.

"This thing is selling like hotcakes. Some legal firms are looking at saving $20,000 to $30,000 a year. Some of these accounting firms are sending out one and two thousand faxes a day.

"And it is solid technology. We've tested it extensively with companies in the US that we are partnered with.'' The service has been available for almost two weeks here to corporate users, although it has previously been used in other jurisdictions.