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Teri Sprackland, Santa Clara Firms Link Up to Hard-copy, post-delivered mail remains a indispensable communications tool. Bills, invoices, and letters are still more likely to be delivered by post than by e-mail. In the US, the Postal Service (USPS) is the country’s 11th largest business, its customers sending more than 190 billion pieces of mail and spending over US$30 billion on stamps and metered mail. The small office/home office (SOHO) market in the US is estimated to contain more than 35 million home offices and 7 million small offices, with over 30% having Internet access. By the year 2000, that access number should grow to 46%. Despite this huge market, only 13% uses postage meters, because meters are expensive and their calibration time consuming. Yet these markets spend US$600 to US$1,200 annually per office on postage. Competitors to national post offices, such as Federal Express Corp (www.fedex.com) of the US and other fast-mail couriers, are making strong inroads into once restricted national postal services. But with the advent of the Internet, and its wide acceptance and use by the small office and home office (SOHO) consumers, postal authorities around the world are hoping they have found a way to implement an innovation that will lower operating costs, increase postal security, and bolster revenues with the creation of new services. Among countries said to be investigating this technology are New Zealand, and several European countries.
E-Stamp Connects to PO E-Stamp Corp (www.estamp.com) of the US has developed a link between the SOHOs, Internet, and postal authorities that through a client-server architecture will allow you to download postage from their computers, and have special bar-coded stamps printed on envelopes straight from a Word for Windows software environment. “We believe that PC postage will emerge as an important desktop application,” says Greg Maffei, chief financial officer of Microsoft Corp (www.microsoft.com) of the US. How does it work? You connect to E-Stamp’s website to purchase a certain amount of postage. E-Stamp downloads the code for postage in that amount to a small chip, termed the vault ID, in your computer. When you want to prepare a letter, the envelope print feature will include instructions to the E-Stamp software to issue a unique bar-coded stamp that will be printed along with the address and return address information. Payment for postage will be done via an electronic payment process. The system is not unlike the pre-paid phone cards already in use in France, the UK and the US, which hold a predetermined amount of phone time that is electronically deducted from with each use. Other companies are also working on Internet-based postage, among them metering machine giant Pitney Bowes Inc (www.pb.com) of the US. The USPS is conducting extensive tests on various technologies, and the European Union is busy with several online postage studies as well. The E-Stamp chip, manufactured by Dallas Semiconductor Corp (www.dalsemi.com), fits into an interconnect for the printer port, and is the only hardware add-on required. Alternately, it is possible to do electronic postage transactions while on-line with E-Stamp, in which case the interconnect unit is not necessary. The E-Stamp system has done well in beta-testing, and the company “currently expects the system to be nationwide (US) by Q2 1999,” according to Thomas Reinemer, E-Stamp’s vice president of operations. The real value of E-Stamp, according to Martin Pagel, chief technology officer of the firm, is the “secure bar-coding technology,” that allows the system to work efficiently. The bar code technology, incorporating Datamatrix and PDF 417, follows the standards set by the Universal Postal Union (UPU). Digital signature will be in RSA, DSA, or ECDSA encryption standards, ensuring security equivalent to that used by the largest and most confidential high-value financial houses.
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