Microsoft Corp and the UK’s Royal Mail are offering a service where users will be able to send an email, have it printed out and sent to the receiver via the traditional postal service. The new service has been named RelayOne and has come to life with the intention of speeding up the international postal system and extending email to the reaches of unconnected persons. The service will operate via the Microsoft Network, the software giant’s online service, in conjunction with the Royal Mail. Users of the service will be able to send a document or a telegram via email from anywhere in the world, to the RelayOne systems center at the Royal Mail’s Mount Pleasant site in London. It will then be printed out on a high-speed laser printer and put in the post. The services on offer have been called telegrams and documents. A telegram is classed as a one page document, and a document can be a file with up to 50 pages. New users have to register for the service, but when they have used it once, the site can be accessed via a user identification and password. Once in, users can build up a personal address book, making the process of sending files simpler. When the document or telegram is ready to be sent, the user will be asked to fill in their credit or debit card details. At the moment RelayOne is swinging towards the likes of Visa and MasterCard, and will not accept Switch or American Express. A single sheet document costs 1.50 pounds to send from any location in the world to any location in the world, up to four pages it’s 3.00 pounds and a document of up to 50 pages in Europe is 5.00 pounds, anywhere in the world 10.00 pounds. The companies claim documents sent from outside of the UK, as well as in, will be delivered to UK destinations the next day. But emails must be received by 5pm GMT, meaning users in California, for example will have to get their messages sent by 9am Pacific Time. Although the service is being described as international, London will be the hub of the operation, but there are plans to build other centers in countries across the world. Working with Microsoft seems to have turned the Royal Mail into a widely defensive and evasive operation. Royal Mail managing director Richard Dykes refused to reveal any proposed time plans for an extension to the service and decided it was not in anyone’s interest to divulge the financial standing of the project and the share each company holds. Nor would he say how many users the service can expect to attract, indicating that aside from all the big talk, there is uncertainty as to how successful RelayOne will be.
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