Facsimile is killing telex – and that’s official: Western Union Corp says that the year-on-year decline in telex usage has risen to 20% now from 10% last autumn, and the Upper Saddle River, New Jersey company is frantic to build new businesses to replace it: the company is getting out of the long-distance phone business, saying that with a few hundred business and 7,000 residential customers, it is too small to compete, and taking a $603m write down with its first quarter figures ahead of selling the business (see Company Results, page 3); apart from ITT World Communications, it will be left with its electronic mail, telegram, money transfer and fibre optic cable-laying businesses, and 2,000 miles of cable conduits under 85 cities that could carry fibre optic cables to compete with the local telephone companies.
