From: Michael M. Butler (butler@comp-lib.org)
Date: Thu Jul 11 2002 - 12:05:57 MDT
Even more exciting than email on your 4x16 wrist display...
China To Offer Hand Delivered E-Mail
The Associated Press
Thursday, July 11, 2002; 9:25 AM
BEIJING –– It's not quite e-mail. It's not quite regular mail. What it will
be, China's postal service hopes, is a convenient alternative for customers
who use the Internet – and a moneymaker for the government.
China Post, the official postal service for the world's most populous
nation, said Thursday it will introduce a new service enabling people to
write mail on their computers, send it to the post office over the Internet
like e-mail, then have it delivered anywhere in China by human mail carrier.
Computer mailing services are already offered in some Chinese provinces and
regions, including Beijing and Shanghai, according to a China Post spokesman
who gave only his surname, Wang. He said the services will be extended to
remaining provinces Monday.
There is a large potential market for computer-to-snail mail. According to
government figures, mainland China had 33.7 million Internet users at the
end of last year. In a country of 1.3 billion, that means only a tiny
fraction has access to e-mail.
For now, China Post expects the service's main customers to be medium-sized
and small companies and individual entrepreneurs.
It's a bit more costly than a normal letter, which now costs about 10 U.S.
cents. With the new service, the first sheet will be about 24 cents and the
next three will be 6 cents each. Letters will be limited to four pages,
China Post said.
It said the post office will automatically print out the mail, put it in an
envelope and send it on its way.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:15:20 MST