NWA-PCUG 09/2000 NewsLetter Article 18861 N. Hwy 112, Springdale, AR 72762-9303 Ken's Korner Postal Service Plans E-Projects, Including Permanent E-mail Addresses by Ken Fermoyle Anticipating that electronic bytes will take bigger and bigger bites out of first-class mail in future, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is readying new and varied electronic mail services for Americans. A major one would assign e-mail addresses to most people. One of the new services could notify customers by e-mail about an incoming bill or package, which they could then reroute to another address. Another proposal, set to begin a three-year consumer test in September, would allow customers to send e-mails to a post office to be printed and delivered as first-class mail. A third program, already available, lets customers pay bills online through the Postal Service's Web site. Postal Service spokeswoman Sue Brennan called the e-projects "a way for customers to choose how they want to get their correspondence." The new services will be added to Internet-oriented offerings the Postal Service already has in place. It began testing a kind of certified e-mail service in 1998. Called PostECS, it sends electronic receipts for contracts and other important documents transmitted over the Internet. ++Online Stamps Popular++ Last year, USPS rolled out its heralded system that makes postage available online. The Postal Service says 280,000 customers have printed $22.6 million worth of "online stamps" since July 1999, but the service has yet to deliver a profit. Both of these existing services do show promise for future growth, however, which may be critical to the USPS is coming years. Considering that e-mail will soon take huge bites out of USPS first-class business, these moves, and more, are needed to move postal service into the 21st century. The post office itself predicts that in 2003, first- class mail service, now a $35 billion business and its top revenue producer, will begin an unprecedented decline at the hands of booming e- mail and online billing services. Benjamin Franklin, our first postmaster and a great innovator himself, would surely applaud these new efforts, but probably would be critical of the Postal Service's slowness in facing up to challenges of new technologies. Banks, credit unions and many other private services already offer bill-paying services, and have for some time. Is it too late for the USPS to capture a piece of this pie? Judge for yourself. Under its own online billing system, the Postal Service charges customers $6 per month to send 20 electronic transactions, or $2 per month and 40 cents apiece for unlimited transactions. How does that compare with bill- paying services already available to you? The e-mail-to-paper system would cost about 41 cents per message - eight cents more than current 33-cent postage. Is it worth it? My personal opinion is that it might be in some instances, but it would depend on how much faster the Postal Service can get time-critical correspondence to recipients than would be the case with normal first-class mail. (Mail2000, a Bethesda, Md., company (mail2kinc.com) already offers a service that translates e-mail messages into first-class mail, plus a variety of other mail-related services. Aimed more at businesses and other volume mailers than individuals, it claims it can save time and money, compared to the USPS. ++Your Own 'Mailbox'++ The e-mailbox proposal, whereby virtually every American would be assigned a free e-mail address corresponding to his or her street address shows more promise. Under this system, customers could simply link the service to any present e-mail address they have, or opt for a special online postal box. Customers could then get an e-mail address using their initials, followed by their nine-digit ZIP code and the last two numbers of their street address - with "usps.com" tacked at the end. For instance, John Doe, 1234 Main St., Los Angeles, CA 91365-4004 would get the e-mail address: jd91365400445usps.com. I know, it's cumbersome and tough to rattle off from the top of your head! But it also is unique enough to minimize duplication problems. This would eliminate the need to change addresses when you change Internet Service Providers, but using e- mail services such as Bigfoot, Hotmail or Altavista mail provide a similar benefit. It's no news that Americans are avid e-mailers. A new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that more than 90 million people have Internet access. Of those, about 84 million use e-mail regularly, while 16 million have used some sort of online banking service. E-commerce gurus have mixed feelings postal e-mail proposal. "They're in catch-up mode," was a typical reaction. Several experts I talked to pointed out that most people apt to use the service already have e-mail - and that many of the rest probably wouldn't log on for the tracking service. "As schemes go, this one isn't bad," said one representative of a Santa Monica, Calif.-based technology research firm. "It absolutely makes sense - the Postal Service's business, and expertise, is mail delivery, and e- mail is just another form of mail. If the USPS ignored this new mailing technology it would insure that it would become obsolete eventually. Any steps it can take to work within the new framework should help it survive."