Pac Bell, Digital to Test Phone Message Service
Pacific Bell Telephone Co. and Digital Equipment Corp. announced plans Tuesday to begin testing an electronic message service aimed at enabling customers to use local phone lines to “mail” such things as letters and bills.
The service, if it becomes commercially available, would be the first to be offered by any company formed in the breakup of the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. conglomerate in 1984, executives said.
Plans to test the service, called “Pacific Connection,” were unveiled at a news conference in San Francisco.
The proposed service would link users via an IBM-compatible software program to a centralized computer facility, which would route and retrieve messages. To use the system, customers would have to have a personal computer and modem, as well as pay San Francisco-based Pacific Bell an access or subscription fee.
Based on an industry transmission standard set in 1984, the service could be used to connect those who use it with those who use electronic mail services provided by other companies, such as MCI, a Pacific Bell executive said.
“The goal of the messaging standards . . . is to make messaging available so that you can send virtually anything you want to anybody. Our goal is to make that kind of messaging available on a broad basis,” said Jeanne P. Bracken, director of message handling systems for Pacific Bell.
Testing This Summer
“What’s happening here today is the first step” toward connecting consumers without regard to distance or telephone carrier, added Lee Camp, vice president and general manager of information services for Pacific Bell.
Camp refused to say what price Pacific Bell would charge for the electronic mail service. If tests, scheduled to begin this summer and end in March, are successful, the service could be offered as early as next year, he said.
Executives refused to say how much they have invested in developing the service, which has been under study since February, 1987.
Digital, based in Maynard, Mass., is contributing a dozen mainframe computers and has also developed the system’s operating software.
“We’re confident this product is right for the marketplace, we’re confident we have a market for it,” said Larry Goodwin, a Digital vice president.
Pacific Connection is being targeted at mass market groups, such as school districts, doctors’ offices and volunteer organizations.
Among the up to 3,000 people who will participate in testing the system are the graduate school of business at Santa Clara University, where administrators hope to use the system to link day- and night-shift students.
Industry analysts say electronic mail is not new, pointing out that consumers can already purchase such services through phone and telecommunications companies.
