Every American should have a mailbox in cyberspace whether he or she owns a computer or not, a private study said Tuesday.
The widespread ability for people to send and receive electronic messages known as e-mail holds important social, economic and political benefits, the Rand Corp. report said.Those benefits include making sure poor people are not left out of the information age, creating new business opportunities and producing more informed voters.
But the task of administering millions of electronic mail addresses wouldn't be easy, some experts say.
One issue would be how to give out addresses to people with the same names. Now, once a commercial provider like America Online issues an address for a particular name, let's say John Doe, no other America Online customer can use that name on his mailbox. Although the name could be used on an electronic mailbox provided by another company like Com-pu-Serve, the ability to use one's name is extremely limited under the existing system.
To make electronic mail as universally available in the United States as telephones, the federal government and business would need to work together, the report said.
To this end, the study recommended using public funding - either from general Treasury revenues or a tax on communications companies and information service providers - to help people who otherwise could not afford electronic mail service.
The study estimated that it would cost roughly $1 billion to provide electronic mail to 10 percent of all Americans.
There are now roughly 6.7 million consumer electronic mailboxes - vs. business mailboxes - with users generally paying a flat monthly fee of $9.95 for the first five hours of use, then $2.95 for each additional hour, the study said.
America Online spokeswoman Pam McGraw hadn't seen the study and couldn't comment on it, but pointed out that only 8 percent to 9 percent of all U.S. homes surf the Internet, a global computer network, or subscribe to an online service. "E-mail is in an early stage," she said.
As a way to reach people who don't own computers, the study recommended that terminals be located in public places - street corners, community centers, libraries, hotels - just as pay phones are, so people can send and receive electronic messages.