There may be no free lunch in this world, but there are a number of ways to send out Email and have it delivered as a fax message — for free. This can be particularly convenient — and cost saving — if you’re on the road and need to reach someone who does not have Email access.

Since these services are available at no charge, one can not expect too much in terms of coverage area or the timeliness of delivery. But if you find yourself sending repeated faxes to one part of the world, it’s worth your time to find and test out one of these services.

The best place to start is by checking out a list of fax services compiled by a dedicated guy named Kevin Savetz. Find the list at http://www.savetz.com/fax/. With things, as always, changing so fast on the Internet, it’s hard to keep any such list up-to-date, but Savetz does a good job of telling you what types of fax services are available and where to get more information.

Some free fax services are run as promotions. A company will let you fax within a given geographic area and hope you will also use its service for broadcast fax or other things. Examples of this include Faxmail in New Zealand (http://www.faxmail.co.nz) which will convert your Email to a fax and send it anywhere around Auckland. Another example is run by a company called NCI in the Netherlands. It will deliver your Email message as a fax anywhere in the Netherlands at no charge, but will add a one-quarter-page advertisement. (For info on this service, send Email to info.E-FAX.english@nci.nl)

Other services are run by public institutions such as universities, but by far the most complete coverage of the world is provided by a service called The Phone Company, also referred to as TPC.INT. This is service is offered by a group of companies, institutions and individuals who have joined together in a not-for-profit manner.

TPC.INT’s coverage is not universal, but it is really rather extensive. Many if not most major cities in the US and Canada are included, as are a number of universities. Internationally, you find a number of countries with complete coverage, including the UK, Sweden and Germany. In other countries you find partial coverage, such as in Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, and South Africa. In other countries, you find just the largest city covered, such as Lisbon or Brussels.

You’ll also find some unexpected places on the list, including parts of China, Moscow, and Croatia.

To use TPC.INT and other Email-to-fax services you need to know how to format the address in your Email message. The format varies from service to service, but the address generally includes a way to specify text to appear on a cover page and a way to specify the recipient’s fax number. For convenience, TPC.INT also has a section of it Web site set up to automatically format fax headers for you.

Contact: To find out more about TPC.INT, go to: http://www.tpc.int. Or, to get a list of areas covered, you can send Email to: tpccover@info.tpc.int. To receive a list of frequently asked questions, Email: tpcfaq@info.tpc.int.