a212  0959  01 May 77
AM-Electronic Mail, Bjt, 490
By JEFFREY MILLS
Associated Press Writer
    WASHINGTON (AP) - Your mail zips across the country electronically
and is delivered the day after it is sent. For a higher charge, it can
be delivered in hours.
    Farther in the future, you are able to buy a small computer terminal
for receiving messages in your home in seconds from anywhere in the
country.
    While the Postal Service says it is studying such futuristic
concepts, some congressmen, a federal study commission and private
study groups are urging the mail agency to move quickly into
electronic communications.
    If the Postal Service doesn't offer electronic mail service, they
say, private companies will corner the market. They say businesses
would only offer the service in profitable areas and that the
government should run the service to make it available to everyone.
    ''Time is running out for the Postal Service,'' a committee of the
National Academy of Sciences said in a January report.
    ''While it delays its entry into electronic message services,
developments by private firms are sure to proceed, possibly
foreclosing any opportunities for the Postal Service to move into the
field in any meaningful way,'' the committee said.
    The Commission on Postal Service, in a recent report to Congress and
President Carter said, ''An electronic communications system which
transmits and delivers mail must be regulated by government to assure
privacy, equity, universality, reasonable charges and a variety of
services.''
    The technology for an electronic mail system is already largely
developed. Messages can be converted to electronic impulses,
transmitted to distant post offices and then converted back to a
message on paper ready for delivery.
    The big questions are when a national network will become
economically feasible and whether the government or private enterprise
should offer it.
    The Postal Service already is losing volume as businesses install
computerized message devices for communicating between branch offices.
This trend is expected to accellerate in coming years.
    The Arthur D. Little Co. said in a recent study that by 1985, 23 per
cent of first-class mail will have been diverted to electronic
communications.
    A major study ordered by the Postal Service into the feasibility of
electronic mail is not due for completion until mid-1978.
    Observers in Congress and elsewhere say this pace is far too slow.
    Rep. James M. Hanley, D-N.Y., chairman of a House Post Office
subcommittee, says, ''I fear the Postal Service, if left to its own
devices, would study the issue of electronic transfer until the agency
was obsolete. It would be deciding whether or not to move when the
private sector had cornered the market.''
    Hanley's subcommittee resumes hearings Thursday on electronic mail
concepts.
    Rep. Charles H. Wilson, D-Calif., chairman of another Post Office
subcommittee, has introduced a resolution that the Postal Service
should ''adopt a permanent commitment to be involved in the field of
electronic communications.''
    
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