Japan Steel Works has teamed up with the Kyodo News Service agency to create Kyodo Communications as a 50-50 joint venture to deliver hot news to facsimile machines: would be users will have to sign up as members of the service, and applications will be accepted from the autumn with services starting in January; the service is expected to find favour with people living in remote areas where the papers arrive very late, and for those at sea; fax messages are not hard to intercept, and the steel company’s contribution is an anti-piracy device for the system.