PURPOSE: To double the communication speed between facsimile equipments by reducing a read picture element by a half in the lateral direction and sending the data while the data of lower half in the longitudinal direction inserts to a space at the upper right location.

CONSTITUTION: When a sent original from a terminal equipment (FAX) 5 is read, the character information or the like on the original is fetched as a picture element data, stored at first in an original area of a RAM and the picture element data is displayed on a display device 6. In this case, the original image is reduced to 1/2 in the lateral direction. After the reduction, the operator observes the display on the display device 6 to confirm whether or not characters or the like on the original are legible, that is, the quantity of information is not lost and when no problem exists, the lower half in the longitudinal direction is inserted to the space at the upper right to reduce the original by 1/2 in the longitudinal direction totally. Then the picture element data after the edit is stored in a compression data area of the RAM and then the data is subjected to sequential multiple address communication. Thus, the transmission time is enough to be a half.