At 09:51 AM 5/2/96 -6, Peter Trei wrote:
I've been trying to recall a nasty little episode from about 15 years ago. Paul was adamant that the USPS would never seek a monopoly position on any e-service.
However, back in the early 80's (It had to be in the 1980-83 range, I suspect 1981) I clearly remember a proposal that the USPS be granted the monopoly status as email carrier that it then and still enjoys for first class mail. As I recall, the proposal would require email to be routed to the nearest post office to the destination, and there printed and delivered as paper mail.
Needless to say, this did not happen.
There was a service of this kind, that was implemented about that time frame (1982?). Don't recall the name. However, I don't think they got any kind of explicit monopoly. It wasn't particularly successful, as I recall, probably because of the low penetration of computers into business during that time frame. But it was probably intended as a way around the "chicken-and-egg" problem that you can't use email unless the the recipient does, etc. Recall that the use of faxes "exploded" in about 1985: Before this, faxes were rare and they were probably primarily used for inter-office communication. (If only 10% of the businesses own faxes, then only (10%x10%=1% of communications can be completed by fax; If 90% have faxes, 90%x90%=81% can be.) After this, and by about 1986 or so, just about every ad in industry-type magazines listed a fax number for communications. We're seeing an echo of this for e-mail, 10 years later. Within a year, it'll be rare to see an ad that _doesn't_ list an email address. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com